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