This Speaks Volumes, If You Want to Hear It

 

Our course shifted that May night,
 something I didn’t want to admit—until it was too late.
 My gut touched my shoulder,
 whispered to change paths
 before the road disappeared beneath me.

I was young. I was scared.
 You had been my identity for so long,
 I wasn’t sure where I ended and you began.

You say I left.
 I say you did too.

Somewhere between the swallowed screams,
 nights we survived on ideals,
 at the verge of tears
 when truth pressed too close to my bruises—
 I should’ve left while I still had it in me.

I searched for signs
 in green buses, in stars,
 in the silence you wrapped around us
 like a coat we didn’t dare take off.

Hoping it wasn’t real.

Somehow, I lack the words to speak.
 That’s why I haven’t yet.
 The language I am
 is foreign.

But maybe just once
 let this reach you:

I would trade my ribs for one last hug.

Your silence burrows under my skin,
 settles in the hollows of my bones.´

I spend my days in analogies,
 weaving meaning into every stanza,
 believing
 that something new 
must be born 
out of the wreckage.

 a map from a war
 I haven’t woken up from.

4/4, 2025