I stayed

 

While my head lay still upon your chest,

I knew, for once, what it meant to rest.

I was home

not a place, but a heartbeat,

not a room, but your breath beneath me.

You said you cared

but not for long.

And I, naive, believed the song.

We traded silence, pulse for pulse,

and in that hush, I lost my pulse.

One glance into your searching eyes

a sunrise I’d dreamt in other lives.

You asked for trust, and so I gave

the heart I swore I’d always save.

I placed it, bare, into your hands

like a prayer the soul misunderstands.

You smelled like oceans, pine, and fire

the kind of scent that stirs desire.

You drove at night with windows low,

and twice, you cooked

You were warmth after a ruthless storm,

a place where grief forgot its form.

You said, "Everyone I love, they leave."

So I stayed, hoping you'd believe.

Maybe I just needed to be needed.

To prove that pain could be unseated.

(I liked your hands)

But did it mean nothing?

Are you running now, again,

hiding in that hollow den

while I bleed through every then?

If you wanted to leave,

you could’ve just said.

I wouldn’t have clung while I slowly bled.

I asked you to bleed onto me too

but maybe only iron and sweat

are worthy of your truth.

I tell myself you were a dream,

but you echo in every in-between

each breath, each street, each midnight ache,

a ghost I never meant to wake.

(Did you ever really care at all?)

You were never mine to claim,

and maybe that's my quiet shame.

Still, they told me:

"Write when the wound is wide."

So I chose ink—

not pills, not pride.

Will I ever stop conjuring you

in poems, in dusk, in shades of blue?

At least I stayed—

even when it hurt to hold.

Even as my palms went cold.

Even when my soul said go,

I waited—

for a sign,

for a no,

for something.

But I didn’t want to leave.

Not yet.

Not while love still clung

to your silhouette.