A Future That Never Learned My

I bled quietly for you, so the world wouldn’t notice called it patience, called it love, called it anything but what it was: self-erasure. You fed me tomorrows like scraps, just enough hope to keep me breathing, never enough truth to let me leave. I rehearsed our forever alone, said your name until mine started sounding unfamiliar. That’s how it happens you disappear slowly, so it doesn’t feel like dying. The future came anyway. It just didn’t knock. It stepped over my promises, wore your face, and never once asked who I was. Now my name tastes like rust, like something forgotten in the rain. If you ever speak it again, it won’t answer some ghosts choose silence over reopening the grave.