The Decrepit Heart Remembers

I once loved so fully, I cracked open beneath the weight of someone who now feels like fog. He was real— once. But time, and the soft grind of sorrow, wore the shape of him away. Still, my heart thumps, a decrepit engine, rattling on with broken rhythm— every beat a memory I wish I didn’t still want. I ache to return, knowing the knives that wait. I am a snake coiled against fire, slithering back toward pain with my eyes wide open. Even in this ruin, something stirs— a pulse, a scent, a breath of maybe. And I, battered and trembling, am not gone yet.