Things I Can't Say Out loud
It’s 3 a.m.
and I can’t sleep.
I told my friend I was fine,
said it with a steady voice,
like I didn’t hate him in that moment
and you even more.
I tried to fix what I broke.
God knows I tried.
But some wounds
close their doors to the hands that made them.
Now your laughter lives
somewhere I cannot go,
in messages that aren’t meant for me,
in those pictures that burn like quiet betrayals,
in the hands of someone
I will always call brother.
And I want to be better than this.
I want to wish you both joy
without the ache in my chest
turning every breath into glass.
But the truth is
I don’t recognize my own thoughts anymore.
So I must learn to sleep
without your shadow beside me,
in the empty half of the night
without losing pieces of myself.
Tonight though,
I sit with the silence in the dark,
teaching my heart
how to let you go.
R