I remember the day your fingers slipped into mine,
a trembling promise caught between hope and illusion.
Your smile was a lighthouse,
and I was a ship foolish enough to believe
harbors lasted forever.
We carved dreams into midnight skies,
counting stars like currency for the life
we swore we would build.
Each laugh was a brick.
Each kiss was a vow sealed in trembling silence.
But walls of love are fragile
when time is a thief lurking in the shadows.
Now I see you in the corners of this room,
a shadow leaning against the wall,
watching me like you never left.
Your perfume still lingers,
sweet and sharp, like the edge of memory
that cuts when I breathe too deeply.
I sit by the window some nights,
wondering if you are beneath the same moon
or buried beneath the earth.
The silence will not answer me.
It only hums with the weight of your absence,
a cruel song that refuses to end.
The bed has become a grave
where I bury myself nightly,
listening for your name in the hum of the dark.
Sometimes I reach for you,
and my hand swallows air,
empty as the promises we could not keep.
Was it fate that betrayed us?
Or did love splinter under the weight of its own vows?
You left before the ink dried on our forever,
turning dreams into tombstones,
and I into a man kneeling at the altar of loss.
If I could bleed memories,
this floor would drown in red,
stained with the sound of your laughter
and the weight of your absence.
But I stand here instead,
silent, hollow,
counting the days I no longer own,
because our forever was numbered
from the very start.
Ifedolapo Ogunniyi
Ifedolapo Ogunniyi 