Your Absence Became the Loudest Thing

You Walked Through the Cathedral of My Private Life Like a Tourist. I Thought You Came to Heal — Not to Wander Through My Ruins

You came to me feral with trembling hands,

soft-eyed, haunted, clutching a stuffed sloth

like childhood could still be stitched together

if held tightly enough.

And I defended you

before loyalty had earned a name.

I let you into rooms

I do not open for people.

Into laughter. Into grief.

Into the fragile cathedral

of my private life.

You sat silent in corners while my friends stared,

and I sharpened myself into a blade for you.

No one would mock you

while I still had blood in me.

Then my world split open.

A gunshot swallowed the man I loved.

The child I raised became a ghost with a heartbeat.

My old dog folded into death

after loving me since sixteen.

I buried a future before it was born.

I packed my life into boxes eleven times,

dragging my body through hallways

while sickness bloomed beneath my skin

like black roses in winter.

And still—

I answered your midnight calls.

Still I stayed.

Meanwhile your new love

grew roots through your ribs.

You disappeared slowly,

the way fog abandons a graveyard at dawn—

without apology,

without looking back.

You said you were busy.

Busy enough to ignore my holidays.

Busy enough to forget my birthday.

Busy enough to leave my messages

to rot unread for months

while your voice lived permanently

inside another man’s phone.

Yet somehow

never too busy

to take.

The spa day you did not pay for.

A birthday I financed with tenderness.

Nails painted with money

I should have spent surviving.

Hours stolen from my own housewarming

while I stood hosting strangers

inside the first safe home

I fought to build from ash.

You fed on my generosity

like it was endless.

And perhaps the cruelest part is this:

I do not miss you.

I miss the woman

I thought was standing beside me

when my life caught fire.

I heard your friends whisper about me once—

about my grief,

my triggers,

my “bougie” existence

as though survival dressed too elegantly

made it comedic.

But they never saw

what it cost me

to remain soft.

You vanished the moment

I stopped existing as a refuge

and started existing as a person

bleeding louder than you.

So when my birthday arrived

cold and untouched,

I finally understood:

some people mistake devotion

for an open tab.

Blocking you

was not rage.

It was the first flower

I planted

on the grave

of our friendship.