Literature
reliquary
The heart is chambered—
four rooms to safeguard,
and your name, still branded on a door.
You never left,
sleeping softly
beneath the dust of years
and distance I made myself.
I visit you still—
run fingers over time-bound pages,
smooth syntax to recall
a lost language
we once wrote in the cosmos.
Tenderly folded,
like a letter never sent,
kept in the drawer
for the soft ache of recall.
You are not mine to keep,
but that quiet, stubborn ache
refuses to change the lock.
I hear you in the old constellations,
in star-maps that no longer match
the sky I live under now.
Memory redraws them anyway—
just enough
to pretend you’re still there.
Maybe this room isn’t about you anymore.
Maybe it’s about the light that reached me
because of you—
brief, yes,
but enough to teach me
a language I still use
when I try to name myself.
So I leave the door as it is—
I can’t yet bring myself
to hand the key back to the quiet.
Not out of longing,
but gratitude.
Some ghosts stay
because they shaped the
