Retinas
You live in the quiet red rooms behind my eyes
Not in photographs not in old messages not even in memory the way most people do
You exist in the place where sight happens
on my retinas
Everywhere I look there is a faint outline of you burned into the film of my vision like I stared too long at something bright and permanent
The curve of your smile lingers on the streetlamps
Your hair moves through passing shadow
Sometimes I close my eyes just to see you clearer
It’s strange how love works like this how a person can become light
Because that’s what you were
Something too bright to look at for long without consequence
And now every ordinary thing carries your afterimage
The sky at dusk A reflection in a window the way someone laughs across a crowded room
You are there faint but undeniable
Not a ghost
More like proof that once I looked directly at something beautiful
and my eyes never fully recovered
