The Grave Between Love

They say souls meet again.
But ours didn't wait for death.
We died in the same lifetime -
over and over - just to find each other in different ruins.

He was never my home.
He was the war I walked into without armor,
knowing I'd be carried out in pieces.

And I -
I was the prayer he whispered with blood on his hands,
the sin he committed and forgave himself for in the same breath.

We weren't lovers.
We were open wounds stitched together with trembling fingers.
We didn't hold hands -
we gripped each other like lifelines,
like knives we didn't have the heart to drop.

The first time he touched me,
my body remembered every lifetime he didn't.
And when he left,
he took my name from my own mouth
and left me speaking in grief.

You think this is about love?
No.
This is about ruin.
About finding the softest parts of yourself
and letting someone take them away in daylight.

I never hated him.
Hate requires distance.
I loved him in silence.
I loved him through his absence,
through the sound of his laughter with someone else,
through the years I spent teaching my hands not to reach for him.

He loved like a storm.
I stayed like a fool.
And between his quiet cruelty and my holy patience,
we wrote a tragedy the gods would've stopped -
if only they had looked away from heaven long enough.

I will not forget him.
I'll stitch him into the skin over my ribs.
I'll kiss other men like they're him.
I'll ruin kind love because of the ghost he left in my bed.

They say love heals.
Let mine stay infected.
Let it fester until it's a part of me no prayer can cleanse.

Because what we had was never meant to live.
It was meant to scar eternity.

And if you ask me now -
"Do you still love him?"
I will look you in the eye and say,
"Only when I breathe. And I don't plan on stopping."