The Lost Locket

The Lost Locket

I wore the locket close to my skin,

your face pressed warm against my chest.

Before the world grew sharp and cold,

before your absence stole my rest.

It slipped from me one careless day,

a quiet fall, a vanished thread.

I tore the rooms apart in vain,

searching for what the years had shed.

Years passed like shadows on my walls,

and I grew used to silent rooms.

The air still held your faintest breath,

the echo of forgotten tunes.

Then the locket turned up, years later,

hidden where I’d long stopped looking.

Your face, pale as old candlelight,

stirred the weight my heart was booking.

I held it close, though nothing returned,

just memory pressed tight in my hand.

Some loves are ghosts that do not leave,

and some losses leave the heart unmanned.

I walk the world with it still there,

a quiet ache beneath my skin.

It tells me love once lived, then left,

and that leaving carved me within.

No laughter softens the hollow now,

no new face can lift the shade.

Some hearts are stitched with vanished threads,

and some lessons never fade.

The locket rests against my chest,

a witness to what was and must remain.

Time cannot mend what it cannot find,

and memory holds its endless chain.