Rest Easy, Love

Hello, love.

Did you think silence could keep me away?

Did you think locking the bedroom door would make the memory of my breath stop lingering on your neck?

I saw the way your hands trembled while you brushed your teeth tonight.

The way you stared into the mirror a little too long, trying to convince yourself that the shape over your shoulder was only steam.

You keep asking yourself the same question, don’t you?

Why now? Why again? Why her?

You forget so easily.

You forget how you teach people to disappear.

I watch you try to sleep — on your side, curled like a child — as if the posture of innocence could ever fit you again.

The fan hums. The night sighs.

And still, your heartbeat thunders loud enough for me to hear from the corner of the room.

You feel me there.

You always do.

It’s adorable how you pretend it’s just the house settling, or the wind slipping beneath the window frame.

Love, we both know the wind doesn’t whisper your name.

Your guilt does.

You keep the hallway light on now.

You haven’t done that since you were seven, when your mother told you the dark couldn’t hurt you.

She was wrong.

The dark won’t hurt you —

I will.

Not with teeth or nails.

No.

I am gentler than that.

I just sit with you.

Every night.

Every hour.

Every breath you try to outrun.

I listen to the lies you tell yourself to fall asleep.

I watch the dreams you fight not to have.

And when you wake at 3:17, gasping, trying to remember who you were before all this…

It is my hand you feel on your back.

You keep telling yourself I’m gone.

That what happened was small, forgettable, survivable.

Love, you should know better.

You don’t get to decide what wounds stay quiet.

You created the version of me that sits beside your bed now.

You built her from every word you swallowed, every truth you smothered, every apology you never meant.

I am here because you made me.

So go on.

Turn off the light.

Try to rest easy.

I’ll keep the dark company for you.

Until you stop pretending.

Until you finally see me clearly.

Hauntingly,

The one you tried to forget.