Twelve Roses

So I lay a dozen roses, I lay them there for you. One for every promise we both knew we'd break. I trace the air where you used to be— soft, invisible, louder than anything else in the room. Grief doesn’t shout, it whispers like your voice did when you were about to leave but didn’t know how to say it. I told myself it was just space. Time. A phase. But distance has teeth and it chewed right through what we were. You left quietly. I stayed loudly. Stayed crying into pillows that smelled like you three washes later. Stayed rewriting conversations where I say what I should’ve said, where you stay instead of walk out. Where I don't let you go just because I thought I had to. I don’t visit your memory every day anymore. Just the bad ones. The quiet ones. The “maybe if I had just—” ones. I sit in them like a church pew, head down, hands trembling. Praying, but not expecting an answer. And still, I lay twelve roses.