Between Bruises & Blooms

I have buried people
who did not get a choice.

I know what death looks like
when it comes with teeth,
when it rips someone
out of the world
and leaves everyone else
standing there
with flowers in their hands
and nowhere to put the love.

But you—

you were still alive.

Still breathing.
Still waking beneath
the same fucking sky.
Still holding a phone
that knew my name.

And somehow
I had to mourn you anyway.

That was the cruelest part.

There was no funeral.
No obituary.
No black dress
or casseroles at the door.

Just silence.

Just me
checking a screen
that stayed empty
while the person
who once swore
he loved me
became a ghost
on purpose.

I kept wondering
if I had imagined
the tenderness.

The way you once
made room for me.

The way your voice
could soften
the sharpest parts
of my day.

The way I believed
I had finally found
someone who would stay
after seeing
how much weather
I carry.

But storms
do not scare everyone away.

Some people
simply decide
they would rather
leave you standing
in the rain.

And I think
that is what hurts:

you could have called.

You could have explained.

You could have said,
I cannot do this anymore,
and let the blade
be clean.

Instead,
you disappeared slowly—

one unanswered message,
one colder conversation,
one missing piece
at a time—

until I was loving
the memory of someone
who no longer bothered
to exist for me.

So I buried you.

Not because you died.

Because eventually
I understood

I cannot keep
setting a place
at my table

for a man
who keeps choosing
not to come home.