Carrying forward the gifts someone gave you while still letting them go.

I wrote a poem and said:

I am erasing your fingerprints from my body, Scrubbing away the memory of your touch So that my skin doesn't ache for you anymore.

Yet I still catch myself wondering—do you ever think of me? What would a future together have looked like? Was any of it real, or were you just a beautiful lie I told myself?

I know so much has faded now . The chemistry dried up in between the silence of words not said. Your hugs feel hollow, your laughter sounds forced. In my eyes, you've become someone smaller, more ordinary than the person I once believed you to be.

So why won't these embers die out?

I read something written by Maisa recently that named this feeling: it's not about longing anymore. It's recognition that even in distance, even in erasure, something remains. Not love. Not grief. Just presence, suspended—a ghost made of nothing but time and memory.

What I really miss is how you saw me. You noticed that I take a deep breath mixed with a sigh when something upsets me. You saw how I tug at my nail polish when I'm anxious, scrunch my nose when I'm happy. You caught the way I furrow my brow when I disagree with something said.

No one had ever really seen me like that before. I needed that recognition so desperately that I let you see all of me—even the parts that weren't picture perfect, even the messy, complicated pieces I usually kept hidden.

But I see myself now.