We Were Building

We made plans in the half-light,


talked about next year like it was already built.


Drew blueprints in conversation:


a city, a kitchen, a life that didn’t exist yet.


I believed in it the way you believe in warmth


before the match catches.

We spent afternoons in the glow of ideas,


stacking little hopes like timber:


what we’d fix,

what we’d keep,


how someday we’d remember this part fondly.


Every promise felt solid,


every silence sounded safe.

But the air kept thinning.


The heat came first, 
then the smoke.


I stayed long enough to learn
 that love burns even when it’s fading,


that comfort can be a slow collapse


if you mistake the flicker for a flame.

Now the room is quiet.


The walls still hum from what we tried to make.


And as the last light folds itself into ash,
 I finally see it clearly:

I thought we were building a future,


but we were actually building a fire.

I still don’t know if I’m burning or being born.