Where the Unseen Learns Your Name

You live in the pause

between a heartbeat and its echo,

where love letters arrive

addressed to futures that never moved in.

Romance finds you in fragments —

a warmth left in a chair,

a breath that fogs the wrong mirror,

a handprint on your ribcage

from someone you almost became.

You call it longing.

The world calls it imagination.

Neither notices

how carefully you fold your hope

into sharp, pocket-sized shapes

you can carry through dark corridors.

At night, the walls reconsider you.

They soften their angles,

listen to your pulse,

try your name on like a borrowed coat

that smells faintly of rain and memory.

Somewhere, a version of you

that chose differently

is still setting the table —

two plates,

two glasses,

waiting for the sound

of a door that never learned to open.

You are strong, they say.

Unaffected.

But strength, in your language,

means learning how to hold a storm

so gently

it believes it is the sky.

And still —

through horror’s quiet teeth,

through thrill’s electric ache,

through love’s almost-touch —

you leave a light on

for something unnamed.

Not because you expect it.

Not because you are unafraid.

But because hope,

strange and unwelcome,

keeps finding your address

in the dark

~S~