in an oasis of tragedy
behind the bars of what i call this
i hold myself quietly
inside chambers built from old fears
rooms i visit
more often than i should
i feel the elevator hum
the slow descent through numbered floors
how we keep moving downward
without realizing it at first
and i tremble to think
about everything i said
only inside my head
on nights like this
where the edge feels closer
than the ground beneath my feet
the moon hangs above words
the sky tilts softly
and i can still feel
the hilt of where you left this
the sharp edge of memory
resting comfortably inside me
my stomach knots itself
caught somewhere
between who i was
and who i still hope to become
we divide ourselves
into dozens of pieces
hoping one of them survives
hoping one version of us
still belongs to the life
we imagined together
and i stack the bricks carefully
hoping they build into something gentle
a wall strong enough to protect me
without becoming another prison
because i cannot survive
this version of goodbye twice
we make moments from time
i watch the clock
the numbers flickering quietly
changing without asking permission
reminding me
that everything moves forward
even when i do not
back and forth i go
i know this song
this melody
this tone
this single note
too well
it has lived inside me
longer than i care to admit
and i hold out the rope
not because i need saving
but because i wonder
if you’ll hold the other end
long enough
for us to stop drifting apart
i can still taste what we were
memory is strange like that
it makes heaven
out of moments
that may have only lasted seconds
and so i etch
i cement
i paint
a version of us
that never fully existed
yet because i painted it
because i returned to it
again and again
i believed it
the way artists begin believing
their own colors
the way memory softens
what reality could not
and maybe that’s what love does
it doesn’t always preserve the truth
sometimes
it preserves the feeling instead
and after all this time
i still believe
it meant something
even if i’ll never have proof
that you believed it too