Not an Ego Death

there is a place
in the house
where your breath used to live—
right there,
between the doorway
and the part of the floor
you always stepped over
for no reason.

i still walk around it.

you didn’t die suddenly.
you died
in slow motion,
like a man
standing in front of a train
and arguing
that it wouldn’t hit him
if he just believed hard enough.

i begged you.
you laughed.
i begged louder.
you said you were fine.
i begged until my throat
felt like torn paper
and you said
you didn’t want to talk about it.

so now
i don’t talk about it either.

i talk around it,
like a crater
in the middle of a sentence
i keep pretending
is a normal road.

the doctor said
it was preventable.
i said nothing.
the nurse said
you should have listened.
i said nothing.
your body said
nothing
for the rest of its life.

i keep hearing the silence
you left behind—
a long, low animal sound
that isn’t a sound at all,
just the memory
of what you refused
to save.

there are nights
i swear i can feel you
sitting beside me,
not as a ghost,
not as a comfort,
but as the weight
of every choice
you didn’t make.

i want to scream your name
but the poem
won’t let me.
the poem says
leave it blank.
the poem says
let the missing part
do the talking.
the poem says
this is what you get
for loving someone
who thought
they were immortal.

so i leave the space
where you should be
open,
raw,
unpatched.

i leave it
exactly the size
of the man
who could have stayed
and didn’t.

and every time
i try to write you back
into the world,
the page
pushes you out again—
a refusal,
a reminder,
a wound
that knows
you chose
to make it.