02/12/2025
I swear I don’t look for you anymore.
Not in the doorways where you used to stand,
not in the quiet hours where loneliness gets loud.
I’ve stopped rehearsing the moment you’d return,
stopped mistaking longing for prophecy.
But the body remembers what the mind denies.
Some nights my hands still shake like they did
on the last evening you slipped out of my life,
and the smoke tastes a little like your name—
bitter, but familiar.
I keep telling myself I’m fine.
That I’ve grown, moved on, evolved—
whatever word makes survival sound noble.
But the truth is simpler:
I just learned to carry the ache without screaming.
And sometimes, when I’m alone on lonely December night,
I think about how I once believed
I wouldn’t survive a single day without you.
And yet here I am—
not whole, not healed,
but alive anyway.
Surviving you - one breath at a time.
