Rita Caronte

The night wore your voice like a funeral veil,

and every corridor of my mind echoed with the ghost of your name.

I lit candles for memories that should have stayed buried, watched their trembling flames dance over the bones of what we were.

The walls grew darker. The silence grew teeth.

I prayed to forget you, but grief is a faithful god, and it kept leading me back to your grave inside my chest.

If losing you was written by fate,

then dying felt like an easier gate.

So I wandered through the ruins, half-alive, half-haunting myself,

a shadow kneeling before a love already turned to dust,

waiting for the darkness to be kind enough to close its arms around me too.

It starts small.

That is the problem.

If it arrived like a storm, I could prepare.

But it never does.

It begins with a thought that doesn't feel dangerous.

A shift.

A question.

A sudden awareness of my own breathing.

And then—

nothing changes.

Except everything.

The room is still there.

The walls remain where they have always been.

People keep talking.

The world refuses to acknowledge what is happening.

But my body does.

My body knows first.

A tightness I cannot negotiate with.

A pulse that becomes louder than every voice around me.

As if something inside me has received terrible news

and forgotten to tell the rest of me.

I try reason.

I try facts.

I remind myself:

there is no fire,

no disaster,

no visible danger.

But fear is not listening.

Fear has already left the conversation.

Now it is running.

And my body runs with it.

My hands.

My chest.

My throat.

Every part of me preparing to survive something

that isn't here.

That is the strangest part.

The absence.

The way I can look around and find nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

And still feel as though the ground has decided it no longer wants me.

I want to leave.

I want to stay.

I want someone to tell me what is happening.

I want no one to look at me at all.

Contradictions stacking on top of each other until I can barely breathe under their weight.

And then—

slowly,

so slowly it almost feels unfair—

it begins to loosen.

The air returns.

The walls become walls again.

My heart remembers that it belongs inside my chest

and not somewhere far ahead of me.

Nothing is fixed.

Nothing is explained.

The fear leaves without apologizing.

And I remain.

Tired.

Quiet.

Still sitting in the same room.

Looking at the place where the danger never was

and wondering

why it felt so real.

For years I thought desire was something simple, a fire everyone carried in their pockets, something that arrived on time and demanded to be fed. I listened to people speak about attraction as if it were weather, as if storms belonged to everyone, and I searched my own skies wondering why mine stayed quiet for so long. I mistook silence for absence, hesitation for failure, and every unanswered question became another stone in the wall I built around myself.

I watched people fall into each other with the certainty of gravity. A glance, a smile, a touch, and suddenly they were burning. I wanted to understand that language. I wanted to know why entire worlds seemed to begin with a single spark while I stood at the edge of the blaze, feeling warmth but never quite catching fire. There were moments when desire arrived, sudden and undeniable, but it came like a comet crossing a winter sky: beautiful, rare, impossible to summon. By the time I reached for it, it was already becoming memory.

So I spent years believing I was missing something. A piece. A mechanism. A secret instruction everyone else had received. I searched through old loves, old obsessions, old wounds, turning them over like artifacts from a forgotten civilization. I thought the answer would be dramatic, some revelation descending from the heavens with thunder and certainty.

Instead, it arrived quietly.

One word.

Graysexual.

A small word carrying the weight of entire constellations.

And suddenly the ruins became a map.

The silence I had feared was not emptiness. The distance I had mistaken for brokenness was not a flaw. My heart was not a failed version of someone else's. It was simply its own landscape, governed by different seasons, blooming according to laws older and stranger than the ones I had been taught.

I understood then that I was never standing outside desire. I was walking through it differently. My attraction was not a wildfire consuming everything in its path; it was a sacred flame hidden deep within a mountain, waiting for the rare moments when the earth itself chose to open. It was not weaker for being uncommon. If anything, it was more precious because of it.

The world loves certainty. It loves clear categories and simple stories. It wants every heart to beat to the same rhythm, every longing to follow the same script. But I am tired of shrinking myself to fit myths that were never written for me. I am tired of measuring my existence against fires that were never meant to be mine.

I am gray, and gray is not absence.

Gray is the horizon between night and dawn. It is the color of distant galaxies, of ancient stone temples, of storms gathering strength beyond the mountains. It is the place where opposites meet without destroying each other. It is mystery, possibility, and space.

For the first time, I do not look at myself as a question waiting to be answered. I look at myself as a universe finally learning its own name. The stars were always there. The sky was never empty. I simply needed the right darkness to see them.

And now that I can, I have no desire to become anyone else. My story was never missing a chapter.

This was the chapter.

This was the beginning.

Maybe letting you go is the most honest love I have left to give.

Because right now I am still a wounded coyote, carrying old teeth marks beneath my fur, flinching at tenderness, mistaking safety for danger.

And I love you enough to know that love should not always ask someone to stay.

Sometimes it asks you to step back.

To respect the distance.

To stop reaching for a hand when your own is still shaking.

So if I walk away, it isn't because I stopped loving you.

It's because I haven't yet learned how to love you without bleeding on everything I touch.

The house no longer sleeps.

It creaks. Breathes. Watches me.

Some nights, I swear the walls remember things before I do.

Your voice comes through the outlets, the pipes, the hallway.

Sometimes you whisper my name. Sometimes you repeat the things you used to say:

“Look at me.” “If you loved me, you could.” “You’re exaggerating again.”

And suddenly, I am small.

Not in age. In spirit.

The ceiling pulses above me. It shouldn't. But it does.

Like my chest when I remember your hand around my wrist, too tight to be affection, too familiar to forget.

I try not to think.

Mistake.

Because when my mind goes quiet, the memories come back.

Your room. The orange light. My body saying no in ways that were too soft for someone like you.

Now I see you everywhere.

In reflections. In crowds. In the corner of my eye.

Always walking away. Always making me follow.

The worst part isn't the voices.

It's that sometimes I still miss you.

And then your voice and mine become impossible to separate:

Maybe it wasn't that bad. Maybe you imagined it. Maybe you deserved it.

Last night, I looked into the mirror and for one terrible second, I had your face.

Your smile.

I dropped to the bathroom floor, shaking, whispering:

“I am not her.”

But the house kept creaking.

And somewhere in the hallway,

I could have sworn

someone laughed.

No idea who you are. And yet— you look at me like you’ve already read every page of me. Like you know how my voice sounds when I lie, how my breathing changes when I get nervous, which part of me would break first if you stepped a little closer.

And that… shouldn’t happen.

Because I barely know you. But you— you don’t look at me like that by accident.

And there’s something in the way you hold my gaze that makes me stay a second longer than I should.

I don’t know who you are. But I have this feeling that somehow you already know who I am.

Sometimes it feels like hesitation. Like standing at the edge of something beautiful and not knowing if I’m ready to fall.

They called me wild like it was an accusation.

Like I had chosen to be born with sharp teeth and a soul that never learned how to stay still.

But I have always been a coyote.

Not the kind hunters chase through dry fields with rifles and righteous mouths.

The kind made of instinct. Bone and moonlight. A body held together by hunger and surviving.

I learned early that softness could become a weapon in the wrong hands.

That people will stroke your fur gently while deciding where to cut deepest.

So I became clever.

I learned silence the way some people learn prayer.

I learned how to disappear before the room turned dangerous.

How to laugh with blood in my mouth.

How to run even when my legs were shaking.

Especially then.

The desert recognizes me.

The empty places do too.

The lonely roads at midnight, the aching sky, the moon hanging above everything like an old wound that still glows.

I know what it means to sing to something that never answers.

To throw your voice upward and let grief become sound.

And God—

there is grief in me.

Ancient and restless.

A wild thing pacing circles inside my chest.

Some nights I swear I can feel it moving.

Its claws against my ribs.

Its heartbeat faster than mine.

Demanding.

Demanding.

Demanding.

Do not mistake me for broken.

Coyotes survive places that kill gentler things.

We survive winter with our ribs showing.

We survive thirst.

We survive being hunted.

We survive becoming the villain in someone else’s story.

And still—

we lift our heads.

Still we howl.

Still we love.

Even with scars.

Even with every old wound dragging behind us like ghosts with familiar voices.

Especially then.

Because something holy lives inside creatures the world misunderstands.

Something sacred inside teeth.

Inside instinct.

Inside refusing to become tame enough to disappear.

And if one day you hear me calling through darkness—

that sound sharp and lonely beneath the moon—

know this:

I was never asking to be rescued.

I was teaching myself how to survive with wildness in my blood and loneliness curled like fire beneath my skin.

I was learning that some souls are not meant to become softer.

Only stronger.

Only freer.

Only brave enough to bare their teeth at the night—

and call it beautiful.

She was a storm I should have run from, but I stayed— like a fool starving for lightning.

She walked like the world owed her softness while handing out cuts without noticing, or worse— noticing and pretending she didn’t.

She had that laugh, sharp and careless, all I don’t care about anything, the kind that made me want to punch a wall and kiss her at the same time.

Everything she did felt like a challenge, like she was waiting for me to break first so she wouldn’t have to admit that she cared.

Her touch was never affection; it was provocation.

She didn’t hold me— she grabbed me.

She didn’t kiss me— she claimed me.

She didn’t look at me— she measured me, like she was deciding whether to pull me closer or push me off a cliff.

And the worst part?

She knew exactly what she did to me. Don’t let her fool you— she knew.

She saw the way my breathing caught, the way my voice cracked, the way I leaned toward her even when I wanted to scream.

And she used it.

God, how she used it.

She didn’t know how to love without hurting something first. Maybe herself. Maybe me. Maybe both of us.

She kissed me like she was trying to silence me, touched me like she was hiding the fact that she needed me more than she would ever admit.

She left marks on me— not romantic, not poetic,

the kind that burned because they came wrapped in her pride, her anger, her fear, her damn inconsistency.

And I hate that I still see her everywhere.

I hate that my body remembers her hands better than her apologies.

I hate that I wanted her even when she made me furious.

I hate that part of me still does.

Because she wasn’t a lesson. She wasn’t a blessing.

She was a wound with a heartbeat.

And I was stupid enough to keep pressing against it just to feel alive.

My hands shook. My chest became a trapped animal throwing itself against my ribs. The nights stretched open, sharp and sleepless, while I stared at the ceiling waiting for my own mind to collapse on top of me.

And I relapsed.

Barely. Just enough to remember why oblivion once felt holy. The smoke filling my lungs slowly, the silence softening around the edges, that false peace that only exists if you refuse to look directly at it.

But this time something stopped me.

Maybe survival. Maybe fear.

Maybe the sudden realization that I was beginning to resemble him.

The tired eyes. The self-destruction disguised as coping. The way pain can become inheritance if nobody is brave enough to end it.

And God, I do not want to become my father.

I do not want to spend my life rotting gently inside addictions I call comfort. I do not want trembling hands to become the only language my body knows. I do not want the people who love me to watch me disappear slowly while pretending not to notice.

So I stopped.

Not heroically. Not beautifully.

I stopped shaking. Stopped crying long enough to breathe through it. Stopped before the fall became another home I’d have to escape from later.

And afterward, sitting alone with the aftermath, I felt something unfamiliar:

kindness toward myself.

Small. Fragile. Almost embarrassing.

Like discovering there is still a version of me worth protecting.

I’m learning to love myself in quieter ways now. Sleeping when I can. Eating even when anxiety closes my throat. Choosing honesty over numbness. Sitting with the panic instead of trying to bury it alive.

And if I need to leave, I will.

Not to run away. To heal correctly. To stop the damage before it hardens into personality, before survival turns me cruel the way it turned him cruel.

There are still nights where my thoughts feel feral. Still moments where the dark inside me opens its mouth too wide. Still memories that ache like old fractures in bad weather.

But something is changing.

I no longer want to destroy myself just because I’m hurting.

I want to stay.

Even trembling. Even unfinished. Even terrified.

I want to become someone my younger self would have trusted to survive.

Maybe you are right.

Maybe there are still rooms inside you locked from everyone, even yourself.

But I have still seen enough to know you are not heartless.

Heartless people do not break down in classrooms. They do not panic over hurting others. They do not write paragraphs trying to explain their fear through shaking hands.

And I need you to know something too:

I was never asking you to save me.

I did not love you because I thought you would fix my sadness.

I loved you because talking to you made survival feel softer.

Like maybe life did not have to be constant self-destruction forever.

That is why this hurts.

Not because you set a boundary. Not because you were honest.

But because somewhere inside me I had already started imagining a future quiet enough for both of us to finally rest.

Even when I was hiding inside my own darkness, you still searched for the softer parts of me and called them beautiful.

I don’t know how to heal yet. I don’t know how to stop fighting myself. But your words stayed with me like a small light refusing to die in an empty room.

And maybe that is enough for now.

Maybe surviving begins with someone loving you gently enough that one day you finally try to do the same.

Please stay alive too.

The world would be crueler without your tenderness in it.

And if one day our paths cross again, I hope we meet as people who no longer bleed just to prove we are real.

Until then, I’ll keep your love carefully folded between my poems like a pressed flower too precious to throw away.