Thesis on a Ghost

I was your favorite mirror—

you loved how I made you look.

Fed me fiction with a smile,

and I memorized the book.

You said I was rare,

but you said that with a well-practiced tongue.

I was just the next verse

in a song you'd already sung.

You were charming in that

‘keeps poison in his pen’ kind of way,

wrote sonnets on my skin,

then edited me out the next day.

I wasn’t your forever—

I was your interlude.

Background noise

in a life you curated to exclude

truth,

accountability,

or anything too inconvenient.

I believed you,

because who lies

that close to someone’s soul?

Turns out: you.

With expert control.

And I grieved in silence,

in metaphor,

in wine-stained notes

and late-night lore.

You made me feel like treasure

while scouting your escape,

taught me that even the tenderest touch

can be laced with hidden blades.

But here’s the headline, darling:

I survived.

And now I write the footnotes

on the parts of you that died—

with every name you whispered

while pretending I was her,

every door you left cracked open

while I begged you to make sure.

You weren’t a tragedy.

You were a draft.

And I’ve since

rewritten the aftermath.