GHOST LANGUAGE
A poem about the ghosts we carry in our pockets
I still reach for my phone
to tell you things
you'll never care about again
how the coffee burned my tongue,
how that song came on,
how I saw someone wearing your cologne
and my chest forgot how to work
for three entire seconds.
You exist now only in the gap
between what I want to say
and who I'm allowed to say it to.
I have become fluent
in the language of almost-texting,
of drafting messages to the dead
because that's what you are:
alive somewhere, but dead to me,
which is worse.
So much worse.
They say time heals.
They lie.
Time just teaches you
to carry the wound better,
to dress it in prettier words,
to smile when someone asks
"Are you over them yet?"
As if love were a bridge
you simply walk across and leave behind.
As if I didn't build a home there.
As if I'm not still sitting in the ruins,
waiting for you to remember
where you left me.
You won't.
And someday
maybe in a year,
maybe in ten
I'll stop checking if you do.
But not today.
Today I still reach for my phone.
Today you're still the first person
I want to tell
about how much I miss you.
The cruelty is almost beautiful,
don't you think?
There is an invisible language
Never native, never learnt -
But lived within.
It does not ask to be spoken.
It stains the ribs from the inside.
It hums in the marrow like a swallowed name.
There is a ghost
Haunting me as I sleep on our bed.
So eloquently written 🍀✨