What I Meant to Say

I have been trying to say something

my whole life.

But every time I get close,

the words dissolve—

like mist rising from a body of water

no one remembers the name of.

There is something I was meant to tell you,

something important.

It waits at the edge of my mouth

like a half-formed prayer.

Sometimes I hear it

in the hush before a storm,

or in the breath between

two people who once loved each other

and no longer speak.

What I meant to say

is scattered.

It lives in the shape

my hand makes on a fogged-up window,

in the silence after the music ends,

in the way a child reaches for a mother

in sleep.

I meant to say

that memory is a fragile altar—

and I’ve spent my years

placing feathers and burnt matches

and pieces of sea glass

where the bones once were.

I meant to say

that I have loved people

without speaking their names aloud.

Some are gone now.

Some are still here,

but far away in the ways that matter.

I keep them folded

in the lining of my coat,

tucked inside poems I never finish.

What I meant to say

is that I believe in ghosts—

not the kind that rattle chains,

but the kind that live

in the way sunlight moves through dust,

or how a song you haven’t heard in years

can stop your heart

with its echo.

I meant to say

that I have written entire galaxies

in my mind,

just to explain

what longing feels like

when it’s quiet.

I meant to say

that the wound and the wonder

are the same thing.

That some days,

all I can do is sit in the stillness

and let the words

come undone.

And when they do,

they don’t arrive as sentences—

they arrive as feeling:

the tremble of a candle

when someone opens a door,

the scent of pine in December,

the sound of your own name

when spoken by someone

who’s already gone.

I meant to say

that I have spent years

gathering soft things—

words, yes,

but also moments:

the way the light rests

on a sleeping child’s cheek,

the way grief reshapes the body

without asking permission,

the way forgiveness sometimes feels

like surrendering to rain.

I meant to say

that I have loved this world

in its brokenness.

That I have found holy things

in gutters and gravel

and the backs of forgotten drawers.

That I have been shattered

and still managed to sing.

And if nothing else,

remember this—

that I tried to write

the truth

in a way that wouldn’t cut.

That I tried to leave behind

something soft

for you to hold

when everything else

shatters.