(Following is a poem written by myself, Jazzy Smiles)
"Chapters I Did Not Get to Keep"
There are whole seasons of me
that live only in memory.
Conversations that dissolved like sugar in tea.
Laughter that still echoes in rooms
I no longer enter.
I did not get to keep
the version of us
that believed forever was a promise
instead of a theory.
I did not get to keep
the ordinary Tuesdays.
The half-finished jokes.
The quiet car rides where nothing needed explaining.
Life edits without asking.
It tears pages mid-sentence.
It leaves you holding a comma
where there should have been a future.
And I tried —
God, I tried —
to memorize everything.
The way the light hit your face at 6 p.m.
The cadence of your voice when you were tired.
The softness behind your stubbornness.
But memory is cruel like that.
It preserves the warmth
and removes the body.
So now I walk around
with chapters stitched into my ribs,
spines cracked but unburned,
carrying stories that no longer have an address.
I did not get to keep them.
But they live in me anyway.
In the pauses between heartbeats.
In the way I flinch at certain songs.
In the strength I never asked to learn.
Some love stories do not end.
They just stop being visible.