Poetry Dystopian

I don't smoke to look cool

I smoke to give my hands

"I am haunted by the lives I never lived, by the words I never spoke, and the dreams I abandoned. Loneliness has become my only companion."

Before I shut the windows, memory is rising against my chest, even if I tell the wind to leave.

But grief is patient, and It sat beside me in the quiet chair where joy once lived, set its heavy coat on the floor, and waited for my tears to run down slow.

I thought I learned its language, in the way it speaks through small things, through a song half-heard, in a name written where it shouldn't be, but deep down, I know that besides me stands an empty seat.

It did not ask me to forget, It did not ask me to stop loving, it didn't even ask to be invited, It only came in and stayed within.

So I cleared a room inside me, made a home where now we live together, grief and I, and sometimes, when the light leans just right, I swear I can hear both, sorrow and love, breathing in the same chest.

Someone asked me today

If I missed you

And all I could say was that

There will never be a day