Portraits in the Dark

I sat with the plant leaf again, its veins straighter than mine. The bus ride had ended. Manila steamed. My shirt, still full of your smell, even though you hadn’t come yet. The blinds were half-closed like eyelids in anesthesia— and I traced shadows with my pen pretending I was writing payroll, but it was always a eulogy. The dust in the corners of the cubicle was not debris. It was proof of my stillness. Proof I had not been seen. Proof I was human. Somewhere a neon ad shouted skin whitening, but I was already transparent. A ghost who had filled in timesheets and cried into broken staplers. You would come one day. Not as a lover, but as a mirror sharp enough to open the mouth of the soul.