Two Eight Twenty-six

Two Eight Twenty-six

You didn’t arrive rested.
You arrived carried
by flights,
by rituals of grief,
by obligations that didn’t ask
if you had anything left to give.

A wake before a bed.
A funeral before sleep.
A birthday squeezed between
goodbyes and expectations.

Then a road
long, winding, quiet
with your luggage in the backseat
and your body running on
three hours
that didn’t count as rest.

You should’ve stayed in,
anyone else would have.

But you didn’t.

You didn’t say
you were exhausted.

You didn’t need to.

It was in the pauses
that stretched
just enough
to remind you
you weren’t supposed
to have energy left.

And still
you stayed.

The conversation wasn’t forced,
that’s what made it dangerous.

It didn’t feel like
catching up.

It didn’t feel like
two people
trying to reconnect.

It felt like
you skipped
everything difficult
and landed
right back
in something
easy.

You looked at her
a little longer
than you meant to.

Not obvious,
not enough to be called out.

But enough that
if she noticed
she didn’t say anything
either.

Time didn’t rush you.

You were just
there,
with her.

And that should’ve
made it simple.

But it didn’t.

Because you knew
you were leaving again
in a few hours
to the reason
you flew home
in the first place.

To stand in a wedding
to play your role
to be where you were
supposed to be.

And somehow this,
this quiet morning
with almost no sleep
and no space
in your schedule
became the part
that felt
the most real.

She stayed
with a version
of that morning
you never explained.

A version where
you chose her
in a day
that didn’t have space
for anything at all.

But never told her
what that choice
was supposed
to mean.

So you left
the way you always do
with her,
not abruptly
not cold
just
unfinished.

This is my longest poem that’s been sitting on my notes for a while now. I figured I should just put it out there and hopefully it doesn’t traced back to me by the person I wrote it about. It’s one out of the three I made. The other two poems are much shorter. What do you yall think? Any feedback helps!