I’ve been grieving someone breathing, Guess that’s the cruelest joke— Watching you walk around the earth While I treat you like a ghost. You’re still out there in the city, Buying coffee with no cream, And I’m stuck replaying versions of you That only exist in dreams. It’s a funeral with no coffin, No obituary printed out— Just the sound of my own heartbeat Trying to learn how to do without. How do you mourn a person Who didn’t bother to die? How do you move on from someone Who never even said goodbye? We’re strangers with a history, Polaroids I can’t erase, Names carved in wet cement That time decided to deface. I still carry you like baggage, But TSA don’t check for lovers, And somehow the heaviest things Are the ones we never recover. Wish I could hate you, But my heart stays sentimental, Like a playlist from last winter Stuck inside a rental. And every time I hear your name, It’s a textbook panic attack— The kind that tastes like cinnamon smoke And keeps dragging me back. I swear it’s the strangest ache, The kind no doctor can diagnose— Because grieving the living Hurts more than haunting by ghosts. Maybe in another lifetime, We’ll recognize the scars— But this one turned us into strangers Orbiting different stars. So I’ll hold a wake in silence For the thing we never buried, A love that didn’t die— It just learned to be carried
