He crawled through seven weeks,
her voicemail still unplayed
burned letters on the stovetop,
and brushed the ash away.
The mattress holds her perfume,
her hair still haunts the sheet.
It lingers just to gut him,
then breaks beneath the heat.
"I gave you what I carried,
a key, a ring, a name.
You marked it as a chapter,
the ending never came."
Streetlights blink and stutter,
pulse yellow, white, then blue.
They gnaw beneath the ribcage
and press on every bruise.
He heard her laughter echo
through gutter sweat and smoke;
coins scatter on the concrete,
a rimshot to the joke.
He cut this trail in whiskey
left dents along the floor,
no battle flag, no anthem,
just shrapnel from the war.
Her glance, a flint and trigger,
still burns behind the eyes.
Not love, not even fury,
just silence split with lies.
The bottle knew its ending;
its glitter salts the ground.
No sirens in the alley,
all bodies have been found.
He slips the lock in shadow
and drifts beneath the gray.
The gospel wilts by morning.
He never meant to stay.
Pulled from a short story, never finished, long ago.
