your—name
in this nothingness, i sit with you even when you are no longer here. i keep wondering how you are, what you are doing now, as if you did not leave with such ease. there was a time you stood beside me like someone meant to stay, someone i trusted with my happiest moments and my worst ones. you were the person i ran to without thinking, the place i called home without question. the sweetest friend i ever had. i loved you with a closeness meant for the heart, adored you in ways i should have protected from you, cherished you the way people cherish things they believe will not disappear. where are you now? you did not vanish. you did not grow quiet. you did not die. you lived—loudly, carelessly—telling your version of me to people who never knew my name. you found comfort in burning me, made a shelter out of my wounds, and called it survival. you spoke as if you were hurting, as if i was not the one standing there with every knife you threw lodged into my hands. i stayed silent while you ran your mouth, bleeding without making a sound, still trying to recognize the person i once loved in the wreckage you left behind.
you were not always like this. i saw you before you learned how to be cruel. and maybe that is what breaks me the most—that even now, after everything, i remember you as beautiful. not because you are, but because i loved you when you were. i believed you would stay. and you proved that loving you was the slowest way to lose myself.
