cracked

“i remember the way you looked at the rain how my chest ached every time you traced the edges of the sidewalk like you were mapping something i could never reach or maybe we never tried. the air smelled of wet dirt and old mistakes your silence was louder than anything i could say i wanted to tell you i want us but the words fell like broken raindrops and shattered on the floor between us. now i keep them in a jar the pieces of everything i never said stacked in the corners of my room where the shadows grow long hoping, somehow someone will open it one day and understand the storm we left unfinished. sometimes i hold the glass to the light, watch the fragments glitter like they were never meant to hurt— like they could still be whole if only we believed harder. but even glass remembers the fracture, even silence remembers the sound. and i think of your hands, how they never reached for mine when the thunder cracked the sky open. maybe we were always a downpour— too heavy to hold, too brief to last, too beautiful to forget. the truth is, i still carry your absence like a second skin, like an old scar i keep running my fingers over hoping one day it will feel different, hoping one day it will stop reminding me that we almost became something worth saving. every corner of my room is haunted by your shadow: the chair you once sat in, the window you leaned against, the faint trace of your laughter woven into the air like a song cut short. sometimes, late at night, i imagine what it would be like if we had chosen each other. would your hand feel different now? would our silences be softer? would the rain still ache or would it finally heal us? there are nights when i dream of you, not as you were, but as you could have been. you’re standing in the storm, your face tilted toward the sky, your eyes closing as if the rain could wash away everything we broke. and i want to step forward, to press my palm against yours, to say,”