I CARRY YOU IN EXCESS

I carry you in excess, the way the heart hoards what it was never taught to release. You live in me beyond moderation, beyond reason— you live in me even after all the doors were shut, long after goodbye learned my name. I carry you in excess— in the books I once wrote when you were still alive in them, in poems I recited in my sleep that turned real at the closeness of your touch. You were a breath that held everything in excess for me— for us. I carry you in excess in the pauses between breaths, in quiet moments where silence speaks too loudly. You arrive uninvited in ordinary hours, turning them sacred, turning them unbearable. I carry you in excess, not as memory alone, but as weight— as warmth that refuses to cool, as a presence that lingers even when absence insists you are gone.