Name: QueenOfBlack(Val)
Pronouns: She/Her
Title: After Light
Category: Poem
Prompts: Day, Night, Dream, Echo, Goodbye, Ghosted, Remains, Almost, Collapse, Fracture, Ache
We were gentle once. Do you remember?
Loving you was the slowest way I ever disappeared
I never said goodbye because I wasn't done loving you.
Your absence is louder than your voice ever was.
Some love stories only exist in the after.
I waited. That was the story.

After Light

I loved you in all the quiet ways first.
Before the day learned your name, before night shifted the blame.

You still feel like a place I can call home,
a dream I can return to, a place I carry even when awake.

Something lingering in the air...

We were gentle once. Do you remember?
Before the wildfire, before the fracture,
before love learned how to endure without breaking.

I mistook my pain, the hurt I felt, for the hearth.
Hung my devotion on a promise already broken,
called the ache warmth and stayed.

Now your absence is louder than your voice ever was,
a ghosted echo in ordinary things.

Still lingering in the air...

Loving you was the slowest way I ever disappeared;
a beautiful collapse, the quiet unravelling I mistook as hope.

Some love stories only exist in the after,
in the pale light of goodbye
I never said, because I wasn't done loving you.

I waited. That was the story.