The Color

It began with a sound—

not loud, not sharp,

just the soft unraveling of something once woven tight,

like thread easing from a hem

on a coat you no longer wear,

but can’t bring yourself to throw away.

The air held its breath,

or maybe I held mine,

thinking if I stayed still enough,

the breaking wouldn’t find me.

But it did.

It always does.

You were still there, in the shape of a shadow

on a chair no one sits in,

in the steam curling from tea I forgot to sip,

in the static between songs

when everything sounds like your voice

almost remembering how to say my name.

And then it turned—

not suddenly,

but like the moon changing sides in the sky.

A quiet shift.

A strange relief.

Because heartache is not only pain—

it’s proof.

It’s the echo of something that mattered,

the gravity that stays

even when the stars fall out of place.

So I let it ache.

Let it bloom like frost

on a morning that still hopes for spring.

And in that ache, I live,

not undone—

just different.

Like a color

that forgot its name

but remembers how it felt to be seen.