Shards of What We Were

In the fracture of what we called _us_,
I find fragments – a pulse, a useless hush.
The scaffolding of love we built with bones,
Now lies dismantled, where your absence clones.

We were wildfires in a season without rain,
Burning maps we knew would leave no trace again.
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.

In twilight hours when shadows learn to speak,
Yours is the silence my skin tries to decipher.
Shards of what we were – an art I don’t surrender,
Hoping someday they’ll piece me back to tender.

But shards are for memories we shattered wrong,
And love is a country we misplaced our way home.
The creases deepen. The pages thin to mist.
What’s left is the ache where _you_ once existed.

I search the streets for echoes of your step,
Find café corners where our laughter went mute.
In vacant spaces where we used to collide,
I still find fragments – a word, a useless tide.

The ghosts of us linger like unpaid debts,
Reminding me of love we couldn’t embed.
I fold the memories now. The creases blur.
In the archive of skin, your touch is a cipher.

Gone like stars we once aligned to name,
What lingers is the hollow where I still call _yours_ the flame.