Relics of a Life Unwritten

To the ghost of you,

pressed between years I can never unfold,

I write now with trembling ink,

stained by the weight of unspoken things.

I should have held you closer—

closer than the fleeting lace of time,

closer than the shadowed guilt

that bloomed like rust on golden frames.

I should have whispered apologies

to the cracks in the walls of us,

instead of letting silence

etch its hieroglyphs into our history.

The butterfly, pinned still,

mocked the fragile flight I never took.

Its powder-blue wings reminded me

of the sky I was too afraid to chase,

of the ways I stayed anchored

in regret's worn harbor.

Your name rests heavy in my locket,

a relic of everything I locked away—

the words I should have said,

the hands I should have reached for,

the days I wasted counting what I lost.

If I could, I’d tear the pages

of this letter into the wind,

let them curl like smoke

around the edges of what we were.

But even now,

the words burn too slow.

Forgive me for building a life

with pieces of a past

I never dared to fix.