the silence where i once existed 

was i easy to forget,
or did i simply fade in a place
you never meant to keep?

maybe i was a flicker—
a match struck in the wind,
beautiful for a second,
but never enough to burn.

you held me like sand,
loose-fisted and indifferent,
as if i were always meant
to slip through the cracks
you refused to seal.

did i echo in your quiet,
or did your silence
begin long before i spoke?

perhaps i was never a chapter—
just a smudge on the margin
of a story you were already rewriting.

i wonder
if i haunted you
or if your memory of me
died before i even left the room.

was it mercy
or neglect
that erased me so clean?

you see, there’s a cruelty
in being forgotten—
but an even deeper ache
in knowing
you were never really seen.

and now i sit in the hollow
where your recognition
should have bloomed,
planting questions
that no one tends to.

am i a ghost
because you buried me,
or because you never noticed
i was alive to begin with?

tell me,
was i easy to forget—
or were you just
never trying to remember
something
that never felt real to you?

because i was real.
even if only to myself.
and maybe
that’s the tragedy.
or maybe—
just maybe—
that’s the beginning.