3:00 A.M. (To Her, in Absence)

It’s 3 a.m.—the world’s gone still, A hush so loud it aches and chills. I press my palm against the pane, The moon stares back, half-draped in pain. Her silver light upon my skin Reminds me where your touch has been. I trace the fog my breath has drawn, A ghost of you in every yawn. Your voice, once soft in midnight calls, Now echoes off these empty walls. No lullabies, no whispered grace— Just silence folding into space. I reach for warmth I cannot find, Just blankets cold and tangled mind. The bed remembers how you lay— My chest, your breath, the things you'd say. Outside, the stars all blink and die, Like promises lost in the sky. And still I watch, and still I yearn, For steps that will not soon return. Come back, if only in a dream, To hold me through the fragile seam Of night and dawn. But here I stay— The moon, my witness, pale and gray.