There are nights her absence feels like smoke,
curling through my chest, choking the calm.
I taste her memory in the hollow of silence,
where shadows bruise the edges of my thoughts.
Even the moon looks away, ashamed to watch
a man unravel for what he cannot hold.

Her scent is a ghost of warmth that drifts still,
sliding through the dark like forbidden mercy.
I reach for her in the ruins of sleep,
but touch only air that trembles and retreats.
Longing becomes a wound I tend in secret,
Pain that ripens instead of fades.

Desire throbs beneath my ribs, uninvited,
a wild animal pacing in the dark of my chest.
It claws at reason, begging for release,
but all I have are sounds, soft and cruel.
Her voice, a phantom flame,
burns through the marrow of my restraint.

Every breath betrays me,
it fills with her, spills her, breaks me.
The world outside is still and indifferent,
yet inside, storms whisper her name.
She exists in the spaces between heartbeats,
where silence grows teeth and feeds on hope.

If love is holy, then longing is its sin,
and I am forever kneeling at its altar.
I’ve bartered peace for memory,
and find myself worshipping what once was touch.
Her absence wears the scent of rain,
sweet, cold, and never staying.

So I burn in quiet devotion,
in the hollow glow of what could have been.
The night knows my secret, it sighs it low,
under the veil of stars, patient and cruel.
I am the thirst that calls her name in vain,
the light that dies waiting to be seen.

@doddyokelo