When the Core broke

Our love didn’t end in a moment,
it unraveled slowly, quietly,
long before anyone sounded the alarm.

At first there were only small warnings:
the way your voice cooled by degrees,
the late replies, the silence
spreading through our rooms like radiation.

I kept insisting everything was stable,
standing in the control room of our promises,
pressing the same buttons
that had already begun to fail.

When the core finally split open,
it wasn’t loud the way heartbreak is in movies
it was a blinding flash of truth
and the quiet understanding
that something inside us had melted down.

Afterward, we sealed the ruins with distance,
built a concrete shell around the memories,
but even now I swear I can feel it,
that faint, lingering warmth
of something that once held
so much power,
it could light a whole world
before it burned it down.