Unposted Notes

When sleep abandons me,

I lie beneath a ceiling that remembers

every name I’ve ever whispered

but never dared to love.

I count ghosts instead of stars,

their pale fingers brushing the edges of my mind,

each one a memory

I was too afraid to bury.

My breath is a stranger —

a cold exhale across hollow ribs,

a lover slipping out the door

before the sun dares rise.

I write love letters to the night,

press them against my skin

where no one will ever read them,

except the moon

and the ache inside my bones.

I listen for your voice in the hush,

in the clock’s cruel ticking,

in the sigh of a curtain,

in the faint scratch

of the world unraveling at 3 a.m.

I dream with my eyes open,

watch you walk through the walls,

your hands brushing past

like wind

that once knew the shape of my face.

I press my palm to the window,

cold glass,

cold night,

cold absence —

and call it love.

I pray without words,

only want,

only the raw hunger

of an open hand

aching for a touch that never arrives.

And when the dark wraps around me,

when it swallows me whole,

I let it —

because in that swallowing,

in that surrender,

I taste something like

forever.