I loved you like blue.
Because blue was never just blue.
It was the sky before the rain
the ocean when nobody was looking
the color of something beautiful
I could never quite keep.
And maybe that’s what I did.
I kept looking
as if looking long enough
might make something stay.
It’s three-thirty in the morning
and somehow I find myself here
thinking about the things we love
but cannot call our own.
Because sometimes
you can love something so deeply
and still have to accept
that loving it doesn’t give you
the right to keep it.
You have to let it
belong to the world.
Once I found your laughter
inside an empty glass.
I put the glass to my mouth
and tasted nothing.
Still, I washed it
and put it back in the cabinet.
I did that for months.
Sometimes I took it down
just to see if anything had changed.
Nothing ever had.
But I knew your mouth had been there.
Somehow, that was enough.
One night I held it against my ear.
Your voice, maybe.
A breath.
There was nothing.
Just the glass.
Just my own breathing
coming back to me.
After a while,
I stopped taking it down.
Years later, I found it behind the plates.
I picked it up.
For one second,
I heard you laugh.
I put the glass to my lips again.
And this time—
Salt.
Not yours.
Mine.
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