I tell myself the same prayer
each time your ghost returns,
The ache in me
can’t outlast
the need for better.
I repeat it
like a man clutching driftwood
while the tide insists
the sea is kinder than the shore.
Yet your falsehoods
know the cracks in me.
They do not force the door,
they slip beneath it,
quiet as smoke,
settling in the rooms
I thought I’d finally cleared.
Hope is a dangerous thing
when it wears your face.
It asks for nothing
but one more chance,
one more conversation,
one more promise
already rehearsed.
So I mistake longing
for healing.
I mistake familiarity
for home.
Until the silence returns,
and I remember
that love built on borrowed truths
can only shelter
until the first hard rain.
Perhaps the ache
will never be what leaves first.
Perhaps it is the part of me
that still reaches for you
which must finally grow tired,
because the need for better
is not louder than my heartbreak,
only more patient.
And one day,
when your echoes find me again,
I pray they discover
there is no desperate heart left
waiting to believe them.