“The First Poem Without Her”
Tonight,
I write not with a steady hand —
but with fingers trembling
from all the names I almost called her
before swallowing silence again.
I used to measure time
by the softness of her voice,
by the way her laughter
held my storms like lullabies.
Now, I measure it by heartbeats —
the kind that come too fast,
the kind that echo in the hollow
she left behind.
No more messages at midnight.
No more warmth in the waiting.
Just me,
a broken rhythm
trying to dance with memory
without bleeding from the song.
She was the kind of beauty
that made you write poetry
before you even knew how.
Eyes like verses,
smiles like a chorus
I memorized too well.
But even the sweetest melody
can become a knife
when it’s played too long
in the wrong silence.
I told myself,
“She was different.”
I told myself,
“She’ll come back.”
But love is not a prison
and hearts are not chains —
they are doors.
And she closed hers
without looking back.
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Now I carry echoes
instead of arms,
questions
instead of answers,
and dreams that no longer fit
the future we built in pillow talk.
And still, I walk.
Still, I breathe.
Still, I bleed gently
into every sunrise
that dares to rise
without her face in it.
Yes, I miss her.
But I miss me more —
the version of myself
that didn’t have to beg for warmth,
that didn’t shiver in waiting rooms
built from “maybe”
and “not yet”
and “I don’t know anymore.”
So let this be my first poem
without her in the margins.
Let these lines carry the weight
of everything she left behind.
She was a season —
but I am the sky.
And skies don’t break
when the wind leaves.
They open.
They change.
They survive.
Tonight,
my tears are ink.
My scars are rhyme.
My silence…
a verse she’ll never read.
But I will.
Because this poem is mine.
And I’m still here —
torn, tired, trembling…
but writing.
And that means
I’m healing.
