joet

They’ll know the sound
Of a room holding its breath
The sound of how a story frays
right before it breaks

Until then
I keep the corners dusted
the windows clear
and the signals small enough to miss

Sometimes I let a sentence fall
where it doesn’t belong
A stone in the middle
of their smooth road

No one trips on it
Not yet
But I imagine the one who will
and the pause that follows

We speak of weather
Repairs that can wait
Everything except
what’s under the floorboards

I smile in the doorway
Wave as they leave
Then close the latch softly
so it doesn’t sound like closing

I tell them I’ve been busy
They nod, relieved
As if the days will keep me
from drifting too far out

The coffee cools on the counter
I leave it there all afternoon
Watching the steam fade
like it never belonged

Not Yet.

Just in time to say goodbye.

I want to believe
you left knowing me.
The real me.
Even if only for a breath.

Measured in weeks
instead of years.
But I ache with the weight
of having arrived.

Regret doesn’t scream.
It hums low and endless.
Like a room never stepped into
before the house collapsed.

You never asked me
to be smaller.
That was me,
thinking I was doing us both a favor.

And I grieved anyway.
Still do.
Not just you
but the time I didn’t give us.

I wonder what it could’ve meant
if I’d trusted you sooner.
If we’d had more time
instead of so little.

I told you then.
At last.
Because time
was no longer a theory.

You smiled
like it wasn’t news.
Held my hand
like I hadn’t been missing.

I smiled around it.
Laughed through it.
Became fluent
in avoidance.

But something shifted
when you got sick.
The countdown started,
and my voice cracked open.

So I kept it quiet.
A small truth,
pressed between pages
of other people's lives.

I became a quiet version
of myself.
It was easier to be a silence
than a disappointment.

I told myself
you already knew.
That I didn’t need
to say it out loud.

That it didn’t matter. 
Not really. 
Not without someone else
to point to.

I used to practice the words
in the dark. 
How I’d say them
if I ever got brave.

Not loud, just…
Real.
But years passed
in muffled rehearsals.

Weeks.

But I don’t.
I can’t.
I’m afraid he’ll answer.
And it’ll sound like me.

I see him sometimes
in windows that don’t reflect
or in the lag
between my thoughts.

When I cry,
he doesn’t comfort me.
He just watches,
like he’s waiting for me to ask.

People still ask
what the coma was like.
I tell them it was quiet.
And that’s true.

But it didn’t stay quiet.
Not afterward.
Not once I came back
with company.

He waits for cracks. 
Moments I’m too tired
to pretend I’m whole.
Then he gets closer.

Not to hurt me.
But to remind me
there are still pieces
I never brought back.

And when I forget,
he doesn’t.
He keeps it all
so I don’t have to.

I used to think
he hated me.
Now I think
he’s just patient.

He remembers the dreams
like they were real.
The house with too many doors.
The people with wrong smiles.

He remembers the voice
I didn’t hear but still understood.
The hallway that never ended.
The garden with no light.

But no.
It left something open.
And he walked through.
Or maybe I brought him back.

He doesn’t age.
He doesn’t speak.
But he remembers.
That’s the worst part.

He never touches anything.
But I feel it when he’s close.
Like static
in the shape of a body.

The first few years,
I thought I was losing it.
I thought maybe when I died 
it left something fractured.

I don’t check the corners anymore.
There’s no point.
He’s always there,
whether I see him or not.

It’s easier now,
the way he lives in the background.
Not hiding.
Just polite.

Some nights I wake up
and it’s too quiet.
Not peaceful.
Just… waiting.

I lie still and listen
for something breathing
just out of rhythm
with mine.

A hospital bed. One the author of the poem still feels like he never left after dying for a few minutes and being put into a coma. It’s been 10 years since then… still haunted.

The Version That Followed.

Let me believe it matters to someone.
That someone stayed.
Even when the lights flickered.
Even when the stage forgot its name.

And when the lights rise,
and the curtain lifts once more,
I hope someone will still be there.
For now, this is the intermission.

A silence stitched with
the weight of leaving,
as if the story ended quietly
and no one stayed to notice.

But still.

It has known empty seats
and forgotten scripts. 
Props left in the wings
like unanswered questions.

Dust settling where
light once danced.
How absence sounds
not loud, but lasting.

Or worse. Have they decided
it isn’t worth waiting for?
What if they think the show
was only ever a fleeting thing?

The theater has felt this before.
The long pause no applause can fill
the echo of footsteps
that never return.