there are days
I can feel the universe
moving through me
like an ocean
trying to remember
what it was
before it became water

and I wonder
how many versions of myself
I have already buried
just to become
the person standing here
how many dreams
did I quietly fold away
because life asked me
to be practical
how many pieces of my heart
have I left inside people
who no longer know
the sound of my name

we spend our lives
collecting things
we cannot keep

faces
places
hands we once held
as though letting go
was impossible
then one ordinary day
we realize
we have become a museum
of everything that touched us

there are rooms inside me
I rarely enter
old laughter still lives there
so do apologies
I never received
goodbyes I never understood
and a younger version of myself
still waiting
for certain doors to open

sometimes
I want to find her
sit beside her
tell her
not everything she loses
will be a tragedy
some things must leave
so she can finally hear
her own footsteps

and maybe that is what living is
becoming
and unbecoming
holding
and releasing
loving something
even while knowing
you were never promised
forever

still
I want to leave this life
having felt everything
I want my heart
worn thin from loving
I want my hands empty
because I gave
what I could

and when the last page
finally turns
I hope there is nothing left
inside of me
begging to be lived

you hold them carefully
the way a library guards 
its late-night quiet
iris pulled tight around a dark
unwritten center

I look
and the room tilts

there is a city under your lashes
wet asphalt reflecting traffic lights 
that blinked out twenty plus years ago
there is a boy standing on a sea wall
looking down at his watch
that never leaves his wrist
learning how silence feels 
when it fills a room

a million little ghosts
wearing the clothes you used to wear
living in the spaces between your blinks

I see the map of every turn you took
and the quiet side streets 
you wanted to walk but didn’t
triumphs no one clapped for
a hard word held back
a morning you chose 
to pull the curtains open anyway
heartbreaks that never bled out loud
just turned to salt and settled 
at the bottom of your throat

you blink
and the light shifts
a chapter closes 
another page turns 
over in the dark

you ask me what I’m looking at
and I want to tell you
I am standing at the edge 
of an entire ocean
watching the tide bring in everything
you thought you had forgotten

let me down easy

not with silence
settling like dust
on everything we built
not with a door
closing so softly
I mistake it
for the wind

if you have to leave
leave like evening
slow enough
for the light to understand

tell me the truth
before it hardens
into stories
i’ll spend years
trying to untangle

I can survive
the clean edge
of honesty
it’s the dull blade
of maybe
the weight of almost
the unanswered room
that keeps drawing blood

so if my name
has grown too heavy
set it down

look at me
long enough
to remember
I was once
your favorite place
to arrive

then go

I won’t ask
the horizon
to turn around

the sun found her slowly
as she lay beneath the open sky
spilling gold along the length
of her bare arms
resting in the delicate hollow
of her throat
sliding over her skin
as though it had all afternoon
and nowhere else to be
she turned her face
toward the warmth
eyes half-closed
and light gathered on her like honey
soft
luminous
impossible not to notice
every small shift
caught another shimmer
a quiet fire awakening
beneath the surface
while the breeze
wandered over her
jealous of the places
the sunlight lingered

and there she remained
wrapped in nothing
but summer and radiance
the day unfolding
around her body
the sun tracing its slow devotion
across the landscape of her skin