I Am Held Upright by Leaving

I lean into the wind

as if it might finally tell me where you went.

Behind me, the city crouches low and silent,

all its windows shut like eyes

that have seen too much

and chosen not to speak.

Its towers are small from here, distant and brittle,

as though memory itself has been worn down

by weather and time.

My dress clings to me

like the last hard truth.

Nothing soft remains except the fabric flying from my shoulders,

that long red grief streaming behind me

like a wound learning how to become air.

I used to think sorrow would make me heavier.

Instead, it has made me weightless in the worst way.

One foot barely touches the ground,

the other has forgotten it.

I am held upright only by leaving.

My hair runs black into the sky, each strand pulled taut

by the force of what I cannot keep.

Even the horizon looks emptied out,

painted in bruised golds and ash,

the kind of light that arrives

when something beautiful is ending and knows it.

I hold a thin black line in my hand

like a promise that snapped but never fell away.

I do not know whether I am guiding it

or being led by what remains.

There is so much space around me. Too much.

Enough to hear the silence

where your name should be.

So I lift my face and let the wind take what it can,

because grief is greedy and love, apparently,

does not know how to stay.