You said it not unlike a vow, you said it like a fact,
that words would always find us, that you would always have my back.
That silence was the enemy, that you would never go
to that quiet dark place without letting me know.

I believed you like a fool believes a perfect sky,
like someone who has never learned to question why
the thing that sounds too good is usually the thing
that breaks the loudest when it starts unraveling.

You were supposed to be different. You said so yourself.
You took the one fear I had carried on my shelf
and looked me in the eye and said, not me, not this,
I will always find the words. And gods, I wanted to believe that wish.

But the messages got shorter. The answers got thin.
The door I thought was open quietly closed from within.
No fight. No explanation. No final word or sign.
Just the slow withdrawing of a voice I thought was fine.

And that is the part that lives beneath my skin,
not that you left, but where you chose to begin.
You named the one thing. You held it up like a crown.
And that one thing became the thing that took me down.

I have been left before in all the ways people leave.
I have learned how to unknow, how to unknot, how to grieve.
But this one cut differently, this one found the seam,
the place where I was softest, where I still dared to dream

that somewhere there was someone who would mean what they said,
who would show up with their whole voice and not go quiet instead.
You made me think that person had finally arrived.
And then you went silent. And I was left inside

the very thing I feared the most, the airless, wordless space
where a voice that promised everything just vanished without trace.
You gave me the one thing I needed most to hear.
Then took it back so quietly I almost did not know you were no longer here.