I Lost You In Pieces

& choosing me in the middle of wanting you

I keep checking for you.
Even though I know you’re not there.

Cause it’s a kind of silence that doesn’t feel empty.

It feels occupied.

Like something still lives inside it, breathing in the dark where your voice used to be.

I didn’t think the absence would be this loud.
I thought leaving would sound like relief.

But it sounds like waiting.

It sounds like checking my phone without meaning to.
It sounds like walking past places we never went but somehow still belonged to us.
It sounds like my name almost being called, and then nothing.