HIS YESTERDAY

He’s not ready to say goodbye.
Maybe he never will.
Because love doesn’t always ask for a future
Sometimes it only asks
To exist.
Not loudly -
Not every day -
But quietly,
In the folds of memory,
In the breath between routines,
In the soft glow of someone still being
Somewhere in the world.
She’s gone from his life,
But not from his story.
And some part of him still lives
Only in her memory.
He doesn’t chase her.
Doesn’t write.
But now and then,
He checks -
Just to know she’s still breathing.
Because if she’s still here,
Then so is the version of him
She once believed in.
That boy -
The one with reckless dreams
And raw, trembling hope.
No one else remembers him -
No one else would want to,
But she loved him as he was,
And somehow,
That gave him the right to exist.
So he carries that echo.
And sometimes,
When he closes his eyes,
He holds her in thought
And asks a silent question:
“Do I still exist in you?”
Not to be rekindled,
Not to be claimed -
Just to be allowed
A place
In memory,
In stillness,
In the heart that once dared
To be known.
And she answers,
In the hush,
Every time:
“Yes - always.”

Heather Lea