The Gray Before Dawn
I wake up everyday with the thoughts of someone else—
thoughts that are not of you.
It is a feeling—so real that I cannot let go.
For a moment, in the gray before dawn,
I force myself to pretend you do not exist.
The silence feels less like an absence and more like a relief.
Lately, I have been dreaming obsessively of another girl.
Her name is a ghost on my tongue,
a taste that replaces yours.
It has been awhile since I last felt this way—
this pull, this sharp, waking hunger.
And now it is hard to admit that I no longer see you as I used to. Your smile has become a museum piece,
something I remember but no longer feel.
Your touch feels like a question to which I have forgotten the answer.
Telling you that I no longer want you feels like a burden I must bear,
because I cannot stand to see you fall apart.
So I hold the truth like a shard of ice in my palm,
letting it burn and numb me.
I will watch the light leave your eyes because of me,
and I will call it kindness.
We will rot here together in this lie,
in the quiet, decaying space between what I cannot say and what you cannot yet hear—
until all that’s left of us is the echo of what I have already destroyed.
W