If only I were the one who mattered
in your life,
perhaps you’d show it
instead of teaching me to survive
on the sound of you saying it.
Maybe then
I wouldn’t feel like an afterthought,
a name you remember
when the silence becomes too heavy,
a hand you reach for
when companionship is all you need.
Maybe then
you’d push the comments aside,
the little cruelties dressed as honesty,
and choose me
with the same certainty
you use when you say you care.
But instead,
I wander in and out of your life
like a ghost you never quite buried,
only summoned
when the air grows thin.
And every time you call,
I come running.
I become lungs
for a room that never makes space for me.
I breathe life into your loneliness,
fill your empty hours,
give you just enough oxygen
to keep you from suffocating.
Then, when you can breathe again,
you let me disappear.
No goodbye.
No gratitude.
Just silence,
until the air becomes thin
and you need me again.
Perhaps that is all I am to you:
not someone you love,
but something that keeps you alive
when you forget
how to breathe on your own.
Just temporary oxygen
for a place I was
never meant to live.