How is it that your absence lingers shorter than your presence wanes?
Fewer breaths than it takes smoke to rise from crushed remains,
Fewer beats than the tremble when your last note slows;
My lipstick still smudged on the wine glass, witness to what nobody knows.
Swear it was just vivid, once divine,
Shadows in the doorway, like that scene was never mine.
I follow the ghost of your footsteps, now lost to melted frost.
I trace the tilt of my head, the pause in my steps, pacing what I’ve lost.
The small things I carried, the habits you drew,
I wander, still bound to the rhythm of you.
I realize the presence I sense was never yours at all,
For you dwell in me instead, alive in every rise and fall.
