Unwritten Replies

Unwritten Replies

There are conversations I still revisit,

not because I want them returned,

only because unfinished words

have unusual ways of staying.

I remember expressions more than voices,

moments more than exact details,

the feeling of standing there

while something changed forever.

No anger remained after time passed,

only questions with softened edges,

the kind that no longer demand answers

yet still remain open.

People leave in different ways,

through distance, through change,

through becoming someone new

without ever saying goodbye.

I stopped chasing explanations,

stopped rewriting old endings,

some chapters close quietly

without permission from either side.

Now I keep my thoughts differently,

less like records, more like weather,

appearing, fading, returning again

without needing to stay.

If memory knocks unexpectedly,

I let it enter for a while,

offer it space, then watch it leave

without asking it to remain.

There is peace in that arrangement,

a gentler kind of understanding,

where not everything lost

must become something broken.

#Marie381UkWriter