You are gone,
but not in the clean way.
Not an ill or wind-blown way.
You are gone like a shadow
burnt into the wall
after the bomb has passed.
Your name grows moss in my mouth.
I swallow it daily—
a bitter bloom
pressed under the tongue
like some holy wafer
I didn’t ask for.
This house,
this house is a throat
cleared too often.
Every room hums your outline.
I try not to listen.
But even silence imitates you now.
My hands remember you.
They reach into the air
and close on nothing,
like a trap sprung
after the fox has gone.
I have made a museum of the mundane.
Your toothbrush.
A button.
The curl of your hair in the drain
like a question mark
with no answer.
I speak to no one.
The mirror offers
no translation.
Only my face,
more ghost than yours.
And still,
I wake with the shape of your breath
stitched inside my chest.
I carry it.
A bruise the colour of your leaving.
