Pashchatāpa

You were the pulse in a room gone quiet,

the breath behind glass I never could break.

And I, with hands too full of my own ruin,

let you slip

still aching for the weight of you.

I never meant to drag you through my flood.

Hurt swells like a tide in me,

and I forget how not to drown

the ones who try to reach in.

Forgive me.

For how I made silence a weapon,

for every sharp word disguised as defense,

for the way I bled abandonment onto you

and called it love.

You didn’t deserve the shadows I threw.

Now you haunt my unmade bed,

the bridge of every song I can’t skip.

I want to live in the flicker between waking and dream

where you always stay.

I still feel you.

Still wonder

if you feel me too

in the space between

the chorus and the collapse.

I was never trying to leave.

I just didn’t know how to stay

without setting fire to everything.