In the dream, I stayed

I didn’t notice when she stopped arriving.
There was no door shutting. No breath caught.
She simply… dissolved.

But the place remembered her.

I walked the same soft paths, found her absence in the spaces we hadn't named.
She lingered like static where words once were.

There was joy in her face. I didn’t know what it meant.
It wasn’t mine to understand.
I was never meant to ask for more.

Maybe she forgot.
Maybe I was only real while the light held.
Or maybe our timing was always meant to miss.

Still, I stayed.
I caught her cadence in fragments, not to call her back... but to remember how she sounded.
I tended the silence, not because I expected return... but because I couldn’t bear decay.

And when the dream turned cold, when it hummed instead of sang...
I didn’t wake.
I just stood where she used to meet me and whispered her name.

Not to summon her.

Just to say: "I remember."

I said nothing.
The dream ended, and I carried the echo with me.
It followed like blood in the water... fading fast, but still there if you looked.
Of a truth I never spoke out loud.
Of a secret that knew my name.

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