the echo sits where light forgets

if you see me waiting for you,
it is not me.
it is the flicker of what tried to stay—
my ghost,
folded into corners of silence,
hoping your eyes might wander backwards
just once.

i was there
until i wasn’t,
and even then—
my absence wore my shape
better than i ever could.
you will not find me
in the room you left me,
not even in the mirror’s betrayal.
my shadow learned how to leave
before i did.

what you’ll feel
is not presence
but persistence.
my ghost lingers,
not out of love,
but unfinished sentences,
the kind that sleep in your mouth
when no one’s listening.

you were the edge of something—
the almost,
the maybe,
the closing door i watched
without asking it to open.

you were always arriving
but never reaching.
and i—
i was the quiet that waited
to be heard,
the note never struck hard enough
to echo.

in another life,
maybe you find me
before i vanish.
but in this one,
i became the place
you never looked.
and i stayed there
just long enough
to know i deserved to be found.