in the space between
you and me
where words used to meet us halfway
and now only echo
back into themselves
I still find you in small things
in the timing of strangers’ laughter
in the way certain evenings
forget how to end
there was a version of us
that almost stayed
that nearly learned how to last
but it slipped away
not with a sound
just a soft rearranging
of what we called forever
now I carry your absence
like something warm once was
and i mistook it for mine
and still, some nights
I catch myself reaching
as if love were not something lost
but something still arriving
and then, quietly, I stopped reaching
not all at once, but slowly
like a tide forgetting the shore it knew
I learned to leave the door unlatched
to let memory come and go
without asking it to stay
there is a kind of mercy in moving on
not forgetting, not erasing
just no longer waiting
for what will not return.