Hands on spine

He came back,

the scent of distant rains clinging

to the threadbare edges of his soul.

He swore the stars had written my name

on the maps he followed home.

“Always you,” he said,

but the words stumbled,

dragging echoes of somewhere else.

The room, breathless with waiting,

wore its shadows like lace.

Moonlight spilled over his shoulders,

draping him in silver lies.

His hands, once calloused with honesty,

now glided too smoothly,

as if he had studied cartography,

charting the contours of my skin

with borders etched in her design.

I felt her presence in the spaces

he could not reach,

in the silence his mouth did not fill.

Her ghost stood behind him,

hands pressed to his spine,

guiding each practiced turn,

each borrowed movement.

When we broke, it was quiet.

A tear slipped down, like a single strand

pulled from my unraveling.

He froze, his breath trembling.

“Why?”

But the truth seeped through the fractures,

a wound neither of us could name,

and it shattered us,

absolute in its finality.