After The Afters

We never burned the letters.
We folded them into corners of silence,
pressed between the pages we never read aloud.
A love too loud for the living,
too quiet for the now.

You said, "Keep it for the afters",
like tea left cold on the windowsill,
like the song unsung when the battle came,
like the words you never took back.

We walked past each other
like ghosts too proud to haunt.
Eyes met like strangers in a past life,
souls shrugging in a likely skin.

Time isn’t cruel.
It’s forgetful.
And so are we.

So I kept it;
the look, the breath,
the half-spoken why.
Tucked in the lining of all the days unravelled.

When the world ends softly,
not all in fire,
but with the clink of china in an empty kitchen;
maybe I’ll unwrap it,
dust it off,
and remember how it once almost mattered.