there’s something so intimate about our decision to never speak again.
not the kind of intimate that dwells in soft touches and words of affirmation
but the kind that lingers on a borrowed sweatshirt
in the faint trace of vanilla perfume

it lives in the rhythm of our song that we once hummed in unison
in the wine that once spilled our secrets and stained our evenings in laughter
it’s presses against the signs we once followed
along the trails that remember our footprints
in the rooms where the shadows fall differently
lingering in the air between the walls
it occupies the pauses, the stillness, the humdrum
that was once filled with the sound
of us

the decision to never speak again requires a shared, unspoken understanding
a kind of silence that only exists between what is felt and what is remembered
maybe the weight of the silence emerged from all the things left unsaid,
the tiny fractures, the small collisions, the little tremors
that somehow became enough to build into something unmovable
radiating everything we left behind
burning my skin with your voice in my head
never spoken again.

or maybe the decision surfaced
from one moment that asked too much of us
leaving open wounds too deep to repair
shattering something we could no longer pretend was whole
where silence became the only remedy

too often, i stare at your contact
hovering over a name that feels so familiar
a picture i took of a person i once knew
skimming a string of blue and grey
that hold the remnants of every story we shared
i want to wish you a happy birthday
i want to tell you about my dinner at your favorite restaurant
i want to send you a video of a dancing puppy

i rehearse the almost
my fingers loiter over the arrow
my eyes meet the read under my last sent message
as the hum of our song plays quietly in my headphones
and i remember our promise
secretly hoping that maybe one day
you will betray it

***

i hear that my name rolls off your lips from time to time
and somehow it comforts me,
not because our voices ever meet,
but because the echoes of our kinship
still linger in the corner of rooms
i no longer belong in.

my feet carry me into new spaces
and every now and then
your musings whisper in my ear
reminding me to smile with my eyes
and every now and then
i reach for the earrings you made my buy
because you said they suit my dark curls
and every now and then
the aroma of your fragrance brushes past me
in the mall, in the park, in the airport
and every now and then
our song queues on my spotify
and each time
my chest loosens
and it gets a little bit easier to hear the sound
of us

our memories are tangled in me
stitched in the edges of a version you will never know
a quilt of thoughts and movements
that will never meet your eyes
that will never fold in your hands
you are left with a replica
soft and unfinished at the edges
threaded with the echoes of our laughter
sewn with my beloved books no longer dogeared
situation-ships that no longer tremble my hands
dreams that are no longer dreams
the small ways i touched the world you saw
woven into a version of me
that exists uniquely for you
forever still in time.

the tenderness of our silence
lives in what we choose not to say
a version of us left untouched

and maybe that’s all we really need
to be held like this
in memory, in care, in absence
left in a quiet museum of us
never speaking again