Solo Plight

It was never about you.

It was the smoke you carried in your mouth,

spilling around me like an old jazz club,

thick, sweet, and dangerous

every time you spoke my name.

It was the promises

stitched from vanishing threads

that you wove around my shoulders

like the emperor’s invisible clothes.

It was the way a trapdoor

was placed in my chest

and I called it shelter

instead of oblivion.

It was about the way I threw myself

between two trains colliding

believing I'd come out unscathed.

It was never about you.

It was the ache inside me,

a black hole gnawing

at the pit of my stomach.

Always choosing doorways that opened onto cliff sides,

consistently mistaking collapse for communion.

I was a knife

flung from the thirteenth floor,

and your gravity

could only ever pull me one way.

But during the fall

I learned the art of departure,

the patient patterns of seasons

rise after fall after rise.

And for that—

I owe you something heavy,

the deep gratitude of learning

how to run from a burning building

before the high beams hit me.

It was never about you.

It was always about me,

as selfish as it may seem.

You helped me wake from the dream

I mistook for home.