Ghosts We Left Behind

In the houses we once inhabited,
Ghosts of us linger, unpaid bills.
Shadows cling to corners where we laughed,
Reminding me of love we couldn't fulfill.

We were architects of a fleeting design,
Building towers on foundations of smoke and wine.
In rooms that smelled of old books and your skin,
I lost myself the day you let the threads thin.

Do you remember nights we drowned in scent?
Chasing shadows on walls where love was bent?
Your laugh – a hinge where my world swung open,
My name on your lips – the one sound I'd stolen.

We wrote our history on fragments, on air,
No endings planned, no exits we could spare.
In stolen hours, in borrowed light,
We were the trants of our own wild delight.

Then the wires snapped. The signals blurred.
Like stars dying in a sky we could no longer.
You took the compass. I took the worn pages.
Now I unfold them alone, in altered stages.

In vacant lots where memories still cling,
I find scraps of us – a ticket, a useless ring.
The ghosts of touches haunt like unpaid debts,
Reminding me of hills we never got to trek.

Sometimes in dreams, I see your hollowed eyes,
A stranger’s gaze where once my name would rise.
The maps I keep – they lead to hollow places,
Rooms where echoes ask: _Did we leave without faces?_

Do I still love you? Like rain asks if it falls.
Like lungs ask if they need the air’s walls.
The wanting digs a channel, deep and blind,
A geography of you that I still trace in vain