#peotic

We were children—

barefoot, bruised-kneed, star-eyed.

The kind of love that bloomed in secret gardens,

untouched by the rot of time.

You said it like a vow, not a maybe.

“When we grow up, let’s get married.”

And I said yes.

Because how could I not?

Your voice was the only home I’d ever known,

and your eyes already held my future.

We stitched that promise into the fabric of summer—

pinkies locked beneath a bruised sky,

the air thick with fireflies and forever.

You laughed like God was listening.

And maybe He was.

Because even now,

I can still hear it echoing in the hollow of my chest.

⸻

Time, though—

time is a thief with gentle hands.

It didn’t take you all at once.

No. It let me watch.

The calls slowed.

The laughter faded.

Your name became something I swallowed,

not something I said.

And then one day,

you were simply—

gone.

Not in body. Not yet.

But you weren’t mine anymore.

Not in the way you once were.

I still wrote.

Still messaged.

Still reached for the ghost of the girl who once swore

she’d marry me under a sky full of stars.

➙ “do you remember the swing behind the park?”

➙ “you wore yellow that day”

➙ “i should’ve told you you looked like sunlight.”

Silence answered every time.

But hope is a loyal, stupid thing.

And I—I loved you blindly.

I waited like fools wait for miracles.

⸻

Until I couldn’t anymore.

Until I packed a bag full of maybe’s and should-have’s

and drove six hours and thirty-two minutes

back to the place we buried our childhood.

Everything was the same.

That old bookstore still breathed cinnamon and old pages.

The streets still whispered your name.

And the wind—

God, even the wind smelled like you.

But you weren’t there.

You weren’t anywhere.

So I knocked.

Your mother answered.

Her smile cracked before it even reached her eyes.

And I knew.

I knew before she said it.

⸻

“She passed six months ago.”

Six.

Months.

Ago.

The words didn’t hit me.

They shattered me.

Like glass in the throat.

Like blood in a prayer.

Cancer.

A word that shouldn’t belong beside your name.

A word too heavy for a mouth that once only sang.

She told me you fought.

Of course you did.

You never knew how to give up.

You loved till the end.

Even when your bones turned brittle.

Even when your hair fell like snow.

Even when your voice broke.

You still talked about me.

Even when I stopped talking to you.

⸻

I went to your grave that night.

There were peonies there—half-wilted, still soft.

I remembered you once said they were too beautiful to last.

Maybe you were talking about yourself.

Your name was carved like a wound on marble.

Y/n L/n

2001 – 2024

“She loved until there was nothing left.”

I dropped to my knees like the earth owed you an apology.

And I wept.

Not the quiet kind.

The kind that empties you.

The kind that tears your soul from your ribs

and begs for time to rewind.

⸻

I whispered every version of I love you

into the dirt.

Into the wind.

Into the spaces between stars.

“I still would’ve married you.”

In every lifetime.

In every version of the world.

I would’ve chosen you.

I would’ve built us a house with a window facing the moon,

written you poems on napkins,

held your hand through every storm.

But I was too late.

And now the world spins without you.

⸻

I still write.

I still dream about your voice,

soft and smoky,

telling me I’d always be your favorite person.

I still wait for your message.

Even though I know it’ll never come.

Even though the only place you exist now

is in the soft corners of memory

and the parts of me that still belong to you.

⸻

You died waiting.

And I lived forgetting.

And I will never forgive myself for that.

⸻

So if you hear me now—

wherever you are,

if you’re stardust, or light, or something I can’t touch—

please know this:

I never stopped being yours.

Not even when the world told me to let go.

I came back for you.