Almost was everything

He’s also living in the almost

I don’t think you understand
what you took with you.

Not just yourself.
Not just your voice,
or the way you said my name
like it meant something permanent.

You took the future
I kept hidden behind my ribs
like contraband.

I had already lived there.

In my head
we were older, quieter.
You had stopped looking at the door
like something might come through it
to hurt you.
I had stopped looking at the mirror
like I owed it an explanation.

There was a kitchen.
There was always a kitchen.
You leaning against the counter,
barefoot, tired, safe enough
to be ordinary.

I was not dramatic there.
Not broken in a way
that needed to be interesting.
Just a man
who knew where the cups went
and how you liked your coffee
without asking.

You laughed more in that life.
Not the sharp kind,
not the brittle kind,
but the soft exhale
of someone who is no longer bracing
for impact.

I held that version of you
like a promise
I would eventually earn.

You were not rescuing me.
I was not drowning you.
We were just… there.
Alive at the same time.
Choosing it.

Do you know how cruel it is
to grieve a life
that never had the decency
to exist?

I cannot even point to a memory
and say,
there, that is what I lost.

All I have are scenes
no one else remembers,
conversations that never happened,
a thousand ordinary Tuesdays
that vanished the moment
you closed the door.

I would have tried.
I need you to believe that part.

Not perfectly.
Not cleanly.
But I would have tried
until my hands stopped shaking,
until the noise in my head
quieted enough
to hear you breathing beside me
without panicking
that it might stop.

You think I wanted chaos.
You think I wanted to hurt you.

I wanted to stay.
I just did not know how
to be someone you could live with
without apologizing for existing.

So I built a version of me
who could.

He is still there, you know.
Walking through rooms
that were supposed to be ours,
touching furniture
that never got assembled,
opening windows
onto streets we never moved to.

He does not understand
why you never arrived.

I do not know what to do with him.
I cannot kill him
because he is the only proof
I was capable
of imagining a life
that was not destruction.

And I cannot send him to you
because you chose a world
where I do not belong.

So he just stays here,
aging in a house
made of unfinished sentences,
waiting for footsteps
that will never come up the stairs.

You did not just leave me.

You left the man
I might have been with you
standing in a future
that collapsed
the moment you stopped believing in it.

And the worst part is this:

I am not angry
that you chose a life
where you are safe.

I am angry
that I was almost
someone who could have stood
inside it with you.

Almost
is a terrible place to live.

Because it still looks like hope
from far away.

Reviews

[Donald Cole]

Wow. The way you put your thoughts to words is beautifully and amazing though sad. Its easy to see the feelings he thoughts to understand what he's in here. Beautiful