05/09/2026
Today, the city handed you back to me...
No warning, no mercy.
Just your face
arriving like a memory
I hadn’t finished surviving.
At first, you didn’t see me...
And I almost believed
I had imagined you,
like all these years.
Then you did.
Your eyes widened...
something flickered there
that I won’t even try to name.
Words rushed up,
crowding my throat,
colliding,
then failing.
Silence won.
You were not alone.
There was a hand
resting on your elbow
like it belonged there,
like it had learned
the geography of you
I once knew by heart.
I flinched...
Sharp, ungraceful,
a salt burn in my eyes,
but still,
I looked.
As if pain
deserved witness.
Walking past you
felt
like lifting a mountain
with bare hands...
Every step
a betrayal of the things
I wanted to stay and say.
And then
you were behind me,
and I turned the bend
like
closing a chapter
I never finished reading.
I cried...
Right there,
in the middle of strangers
and passing lives.
No one stopped.
No one needed to.
Some grief
doesn’t ask permission.
But tonight,
under a lonely, listening moon,
I gathered the wreckage of you
inside my chest
and sent you a wish...
Not for return,
not for regret,
not even for remembrance,
but for everything
you ever wanted.
Even
if it’s the hand
that isn’t mine anymore.
