What I don't say.

There’s a hole
in the shape of a sentence
I never got to finish.

It sits
right behind my ribs,
a small, deliberate vacancy
where something warm
used to answer back.

I don’t write the name
of what’s missing.
I leave the line open,
a blank
that stares harder
than any word could.

People ask
what changed.
I tell them
nothing.
Because nothing
is the only thing
that stayed.

There’s a chair
in my house
no one sits in.
Not because it’s empty,
but because
I can still feel
the weight
that isn’t there.

I walk around it
like a bruise.

There’s a sound
I don’t hear anymore—
the soft shift
of trust
moving in my chest.
It used to be constant,
a heartbeat
with a second pulse.

Now it’s gone.
And the silence
is louder
than the loss.

I keep trying
to stitch the air
back together,
but every thread
breaks
on the same
unspoken thing.

I don’t say it.
I won’t.
The poem
is stronger
without the word
that ruined me.

So I leave it out.
Let the absence
do the cutting.

Let the blank space
tell the truth
I’m too tired
to repeat.

Let the reader
lean into the void
and feel
exactly
what I lost.