Past Tense

She was everything he looked for in a partner
Her presence made his heart beat slower
She was the site manager for the construction site just below his nose
Responsible for building his smile brick by brick
She specialized in breaking his ribs with laughter he couldn’t contain
She made him want to be better
She made him see himself in ways he never thought he would
But I guess the question on your mind is why is this poem in past tense
Because somewhere along the scaffold of them he felt a faint tremor and instead of tightening a single bolt he treated the vibration as prophecy
As if her love was an earthquake he had no strength to stand through.
So he stepped back. No warning. No siren. Just the quiet cruelty of retreat.
He speaks of her in past tense not because she vanished but because he made himself the disappearing act.
He slipped out through an emergency exit she didn’t even know they had
Leaving her mid sentence holding a blueprint with his fingerprints still drying on it.
The guilt is a room he still wanders through.
It smells of rust and unfinished work.
Her voice echoes in it like a supervisor calling out his name long after he clocked out and never returned.
He knows he should have stayed and reinforced the weak joints instead of assuming the whole structure was doomed just because he was scared of heights.
The truth is he didn’t break things off to save either of them.
He broke things off to spare himself from facing the parts of him that trembled in her presence
The parts she held up to the light so he could finally see what needed repair.
He walked away from the one person
who was willing to rebuild him piece by piece because he couldn’t bear to watch her touch the damaged sections of his soul.
And now some nights he hears the collapse anyway
The sound of her trust falling inward
The dust of her disappointment settling on his conscience.
He sweeps it off his chest in slow strokes
Each one a confession that he chose cowardice over construction
Silence over scaffolding
Escape over effort.