She’s Still Out There

She’s still out there

somewhere between a borrowed couch and the bottom of a bottle,

telling half truths with a full mouth,

swearing she’s got it under control while her shadow slips through another unfamiliar door.

She’s still out there

hair tangled with regret, lips cracked with promises she broke before they finished forming.

I used to trace her name in the fogged glass of winter windows,

pretending she might return wrapped in the kind of love that tucks you in and stays.

But she never stayed.

She vanished;

night after night, like smoke pulled through the cracks of a house too tired to stand.

And still,

I scan every alley, every tired face with hollow eyes;

as if grief wears her skin and I might recognize it by the way it limps when it walks.

She’s still out there

That’s the cruel part.

Alive.

Breathing.

Yet gone in all the ways that matter.

Some nights, I still feel the weight of her absence like a second spine.

I carry it,

In the way I check locks twice, in the way I speak softly to children, in the way I don’t cry;

not even when I want to.

She’s still out there,

and I am here

learning to stop apologizing for the wounds I didn’t cause.

I used to want her to come back as someone different.

Now;

I just want peace in a life she didn’t finish ruining.

She’s still out there and,

somehow so am I.