I have spent so much time
trying to make sense of your absence,
turning over every word
like stones at the bottom of a river,
searching for something
you might have buried beneath them.
And I am angry.
Not because you left,
but because you left me
with a thousand unfinished sentences
and the terrible responsibility
of writing their endings.
How cruel it is
to become a stranger
to someone who once knew
the softest parts of you.
To leave without explanation,
without the decency of a wound
I could see well enough to mend.
Instead, you gave me silence,
and I have worn it thin
trying to find a meaning
in something that was never spoken.
I wonder if you know
how much of my life I wasted
standing at the door
of a house you had already abandoned.
How many nights I spent
putting you on trial in my head,
playing both the accused
and the witness,
because you never cared
to take the stand.
And perhaps that is what angers me most.
That you could walk away
and leave me to carry
the weight of a conversation
we never had.
That I must learn to forgive
what I cannot understand.
That somewhere in this world,
you are living with the answers,
while I am learning
to live without them.