AS IT WAS

I want to rewind and not change, Stay and hold on to the days when your name felt like home. When our conversations were not careful, When love wasn't something to be attenuated, But something that simply was. I'm surviving the silence you left behind, Trying to fill the gaps with memories, Tricking myself, saying time can walk backward, Can undo the unraveling, and can stitch ourselves whole again. This is not war but absence, Not betrayal but distance, Not anger but the quiet ache of being left behind. I don't know where to place this longing, The pain to return to the place that no longer exists. But if love was once real, does it still echo? And if I reach for you, will I only find empty air?