I carry them all

The broken days folded like paper

In the hollow of my chest

Creased with names I no longer

Speak out loud.

Each breath is a ghost

Threaded through the silence of things

I can’t bear to forget

There is a weight to remembrance.

It doesn’t not scream

It sits- patient, patient-

In the marrow of my spine,

Curling like smoke in the rib cage

Where joy once made a home.

I remember the scent of rain

On the morning you left,

How the sky did not shatter,

How the world kept moving

As if something irreplaceable

Hadn’t just slipped through my fingers.

They say memory is a gift.

But this one…

This one has teeth.

It bites into midnight,

And in its jaws I find

The sound of your laughter,

The echo of hands that held me once

And never will again.

I try to set them down,

The fragments, the shadows,

But they cling like wet ash

To a fire long gone cold.

I would give anything

To forget the shape of your goodbye.

But I would give been more

To remember you

Without breaking.