There is a silence
that grows teeth,
a shadow that drinks from the same cup
as your joy—
but it is never full.
He loved once.
Not in the way of flowers and songs,
but like a man clings
to the last breath in his chest
when drowning is no longer a question.
She was the sun,
and he drank her with his eyes
until blindness became
the price of devotion.
Then came the leaving.
Not like a storm, not sudden.
More like a room slowly emptied—
chair by chair,
laughter by laughter,
until only dust remained
and the echo of promises
meant in a moment
but betrayed by time.
He walked the streets after that,
not to go anywhere—
but to be outside of himself.
Inside,
the furniture was burning.
Inside,
the walls whispered her name
like a hymn in reverse.
You would not know him,
this man made of fractures.
He smiled, yes—
the way broken clocks still tick
though no one trusts the time.
He carried the note in his coat pocket
for three weeks.
It grew soft with folding.
Words rubbed smooth by the friction
of hesitation.
No one saw the wind
move differently around him.
No one noticed the hunger
was not for food,
but for peace
too long denied.
And in the final hour,
he lit a single candle
not for light—
but so the dark would know
where to find him.
He did not scream.
He did not beg.
He simply unzipped the sky
and slipped out of its burden.
As if life had been
a garment too heavy for his shoulders—
stitched with threads
of every word
left unsaid.
They will call it tragedy.
They will say
he was “too sensitive,”
or that love
“should not destroy a man.”
But they never felt
how sharp goodbye can be
when it slices the soul
instead of the air.
He did not choose death.
He chose silence.
He chose
the only room
where her voice would not follow.
Now,
the trees do not lean toward his name.
The earth folds him gently,
but without fanfare.
Only the moon mourns him—
that pale witness to the final breath—
pulling its cold face
closer to the sea
in sorrow.
And I,
who did not know his name,
write this
as a small fire
against the dark
he could no longer carry.
Broken Author 