Elegy for the Person I Almost Became

I light a candle for the life that never wore my name.

Not the loud one I chased and lost —

the quiet one,

the one that waited at the edge of every choice I didn’t make.

They breathe in the gaps between my breaths,

this almost-self,

standing in rooms I never entered,

holding books I never opened,

laughing with people who were never mine.

I visit them sometimes in the dark,

as if entering a chapel built of unfinished sentences.

Their voice sounds like mine,

but softer —

untouched by the storms that shaped me.

I wonder if they mourn me, too.

If somewhere in their alternate dusk,

they light a candle for the one who walked away.

Two shadows, facing each other through the thin wall of possibility.

This is not regret.

It is a kind of tenderness —

a small ceremony for the person who could have been.

I press my forehead to the invisible glass between us,

and whisper a name I can no longer remember.

Then I blow out the flame.

And they vanish,

like breath against a mirror.