THE CATHEDRAL OF YOUR INDIFFERENCE

You gave me nothing I could hold, yet I have held it anyway—

the crumbs, the glances, the half-smiles tossed like pennies in my tray.

I built a god from your neglect, I prayed to silences you kept,

I knelt before the altar of the hours that you overslept.

You never struck me down, my love, you simply let me kneel and stay,

and that was crueler than a blow—you let me worship and decay.

I know the weight of every door that closed behind you, soft and slow,

I know the hollow in the room where your absence started to grow.

I filled it with my desperate hope, I stuffed it full of fevered dreams,

I painted over cracks with wishes, mended everything with seams

of "maybe someday," "if," "perhaps"—a tapestry of things that never

would be, could be, should be mine, but I wore it like a tether.

You were the match and I the wood, you were the spark and I the flame,

but you walked away before the fire could even learn to speak your name.

You left me burning in the dark, a pyre with no one to see,

a beacon lit for nobody, a signal you would never be

the one to answer. Still I burn, still I consume myself for you,

a sacrifice you never asked for, but I offered it as proof.

And if you asked me now, today, if I would choose to feel less,

I'd tell you that this ache I carry is the only thing I possess

that proves I lived, that proves I loved, that proves I was not made of stone.

For what is grief if not the evidence that something real was known?

Even if that something was a ghost, a shadow, a mirage you cast,

I loved you in the space between what was and what could never last.