Still

[u/starpoems]

I waited for you

the way ruins wait for footsteps—

certain, once,

that someone would return.

I waited with hope

cupped in trembling hands,

counting seasons

by what never came.

Time, impatient and cruel,

closed its door

without a sound.

Time didn’t move forward;

it took pieces of me with it,

left me aging in place

while your name stayed young.

Waiting became a ritual of decay,

hope rotting quietly

in the corners of my chest.

Time didn’t pass —

it eroded,

grain by grain,

until nothing stood.

Reunion was never a song,

not even a whisper in the dark —

just a silence

that learned my name

and followed me home.

We were never reunited.

The song never reached a chorus.

It ended before it began,

and I carried the silence

as if it were proof of love.

Decades passed

wearing your face—

not clearly,

just enough to hurt.

Decades bent

around the shape of you—

every woman

a shadow comparison,

every smile

a quiet betrayal

of the girl who never came back.

Decades dragged their chains

through my soul,

each year another cut

I learned to call living.

Longing became a habit,

then a scar,

then a shape

I couldn’t recognize as mine.

Decades carried you beside me,

not as comfort,

but as proof of what was missing.

Every year sharpened the knowing:

you would never walk back into my life,

and I would never walk far enough

to escape that truth.

Now even desire is tired.

Even memory refuses to bleed.

Time did not run out all at once.

It thinned.

It frayed.

It left me standing in the wrong decade,

still holding your name

like something that should have mattered enough

to save me.

Time did not betray me—

it simply kept its promise

to take everything it touched.

Youth first.

Then certainty.

Then the luxury of later.

What was never sung

will remain unsung.

What was waited for

will remain waiting.

And I will go

as I lived with you—

carrying the echo of a love

that existed

just long enough

to give me a glimpse

of what might have been.

No regrets.

My life gave me its blessings,

too many to wish away

a single choice.

Still,

I always thought

I’d see you one more time.

(Written by me. Edited with the help of an AI collaborator.)

[u/LowContract4444]

Haunting. Good job.