How i forget👨‍👩‍👧

I forget them, but I lose myself too. The quiet ache of loving and being left behind ✍🏽

I like you, then I erase the place you live in my chest.

I pull the curtains closed on mornings that remind me of you.

I walk past your laugh like it's a street I don't belong to.

They left without goodbye, small footsteps that swallowed whole rooms.

They chose other maps and folded me into yesterday's coat.

I waited; they walked on. The waiting taught my hands to hold nothing.

So I punish the wanting: I stop answering my own heart.

I tell myself not to hope, not to look, not to call your name.

I make silence into armor and loneliness into a rule.

It works for a time, the ache dulls like a bruise.

But the forgetting is sharp, like rubbing salt into a wound.

I lose pieces of myself to keep from being broken more.

This is the cost I pay: small deaths every day, quiet and steady.

I survive yes , but I am quieter, lighter, and lonelier for it.