The Shape You Left Behind

I still keep your name
in the drawer beside my bed,
where I keep things
I am afraid to throw away.

Some nights,
I open it just to hear
the silence move.

I loved you strangely,
the way the moon loves the ocean,
pulling at something
it can never hold.

You used to sleep beside me
and I could swear
the stars came closer
to listen to your breathing.

Now your side of the bed
is a small country
I am no longer allowed to visit.

Yesterday,
I found your shadow
standing in the kitchen.

It asked me
why I stopped making two cups of coffee.

I didn't answer.

Some questions have teeth.

My heart has become
a house with too many doors.
Every door opens
to a different version of you,
you laughing,
you leaving,
you saying stay,
you saying nothing at all.

I walk through them
until morning.

Sometimes I dream
that we are still together.

In the dream,
you are made of sunlight
and I am made of rain,
and somehow
we don't destroy each other.

We just disappear
into the same river.

Then I wake.

The ceiling is still there.
The morning is still cold.
And your absence
is sitting on my chest
like a bird that has forgotten
how to fly.

I wish love ended
when people left.

But it doesn't.

It stays behind
in ridiculous places,

in songs you never liked,
in streets you never walked,
in the smell of rain
on a shirt you forgot,

in the heart,

where everything we lose,
learns how to live
without us.