Between Bruises & Blooms

There is a place where answers should have been.

Instead, I found echoes.

A thousand unsent explanations drift through the halls of my mind, wearing your voice like borrowed clothing.

Some days, I convince myself you are only lost.

Other days, I wonder if disappearing was the destination all along.

The hardest part is not missing you.

It is arguing with a silence that never argues back.

Every memory becomes a witness.

Every promise takes the stand.

Every ordinary afternoon is cross-examined until I no longer know whether I am searching for the truth—

or simply a version of it that hurts less.

So I light a candle instead of another question.

The flame cannot tell me where you are.

It cannot explain why love sometimes leaves without collecting its own shadow.

But it reminds me that even abandoned fires still know how to make light.

Perhaps that is the answer silence was never brave enough to speak.