ℳ

not in the way the stories promise,

where fate ties ribbons around our wrists,

and every ending is already written.

but i only dream that every version of me

was becoming the one

that would finally find you.

because i cannot believe

that every lonely thing i have ever carried

was meant to end

without your name

find me somewhere impossible, where nothing has to be explained and no one has to leave.

we’ll speak as though we’ve never learned the language of goodbye, and morning can keep pretending it knows us better.

and no amount of distance dulls the bite.

maybe this was always my fate,

the place where things that never happen go on pretending they might.

each morning, i water empty soil and watch silence climb the trellis until it covers everything i meant to become.

there are no roses here, only pale stems reaching for a sun that always seems to belong to someone else.

the birds refuse to nest, yet they circle overhead as though remembering a season i somehow misplaced.

i walk the narrow paths, counting unopened buds, collecting the names of futures that vanished before they learned my face.

by evening, the whole garden smells of rain that never falls.

still, i lock the gate gently,

like the moon hanging low outside my window,

your name on my lips,

like it was made to hold me.

let me love you

violently, brutally,

with a devotion so deep

i want it in the plainest way possible.

yours,

i was made for wanting you.

for the ache of it,

for never getting enough.

i’m blood drunk off of you,

in places touched by grief,

small blue mouths

whispering stay to things already leaving.

i think that's why i loved you so much,

because even as a child

i could feel you slipping away from me.

i press your name

between the pages of me

like a dying flower,

hoping memory can make something last.

but grief is cruel like that.

keeping people alive

or something close to it.

it doesn't show itself at first.

but you're the only one

who notices

how my love

the world would keep breathing as if i were never more than a quiet thought,

slipping softly through someone’s mind and fading before it could stay.

i would call out your name, but it would pass through you,

like wind moving through an empty room,

unseen and unfelt,

until i became something weightless,

lingering only in the space where i once was.

a ghost, still loving, still reaching,

still hoping that one day

someone might turn around

slowly i unravel like a flower in bloom,

petal by petal, like something unseen is pulling me open.

and i keep thinking someone will notice,

the way i’m softer now,

the way i don’t hold myself the same.

but it’s quiet.

and i stay like this anyway,

open a little too long,

it tangles,

wild, uncombed thoughts curling

around anything that feels like meaning.

i fixate

on a word,

a glance,

the way your voice almost breaks

on something you won’t say,

and suddenly i am drowning in it.

there is no quiet in me,

only echoes repeating,

again,

again,

again,

until the line is perfect,

or it ruins me trying.

i think,

if you looked close enough,

you would see

this chaos is only care