1am

It came like rain on a windowpane,

soft but insistent, slipping through cracks,

seeping into the quiet spaces

where I thought I was safe,

your voice not thunder, not flame,

just a quiet undoing,

a thread pulled loose, unravelling slow,

hands retreating before they were ever held

I swear the air turned heavy,

the walls leaned in,

the ceiling sagged under the weight

of a name no longer yours to speak

maybe I should have known –

your breath caught,

a bird against glass, startled and lost,

by the way the room shrank between us,

by the way warmth turned to memory

before it ever turned cold

you said it, or something like it,

or maybe you didn’t say anything at all,

maybe I just heard the absence,

felt the shift in the way only the body knows,

the way roots know when the rain will not return

I wanted to ask if it hurt you too,

if it sat in your chest the same way,

if the taste of it turned bitter at the edges,

but the words caught in my throat,

teeth in fruit, something once sweet

and now just ruin

so I sat in the echo,

in the place where love had been,

in the silence that took its shape.

It was only 1am,

but I swear the sun never rose again.