You ask now how I once
thought of you?
As if you owned my answer.
I could live forever
listening to the bamboo
trees whispering
outside my bedroom.
The timbre of your voice
unhinging me.
Then the path where you never
saw your shadow.
I felt your heaviness, how
you scorned yourself.
Jasmine at night,
a thicket blinking back.
Its perfume floating up,
lingering,
opening me only
to leave me broken.
And not just you.
It happened over and over.
Sometimes so quick
as to be imagined.
A moment can be the sum of a life.
Everything you said when you
touched me
electrified me.
Hollow space left behind.
Jackdaw Review, October 2025