Salt Mirror
I keep my heart in a glass of water, watch it blur its own edges, a red thing learning to breathe without instructions. I wanted to be wanted, that old hunger with its bright teeth. I mistook echoes for voices, mistook heat for home, let absence wear a lover’s coat. Regret is not loud. It is a moth in the daylight, beating itself against nothing, convinced there must be a door if it keeps trying. I catalog my mistakes like bones on a shore, not to worship them, but to learn their shapes, to see which ones still point inward. There is a self beneath the wanting, a quiet mineral thing, older than apologies, older than shame. It does not beg. It waits. Tonight I reach out my hands to a ghost. The cold air cracks my skin, and I do not care as I bleed. The mirror clouds, then clears. What looks back is unfinished, and so very undeserving. Not whole, nor will I ever be again Without you