In a city veined with ghosts,
where time pools in the corners
and the air holds its breath,
the past rises like steam
from cobblestones—
warm, familiar,
and aching to be touched.

You are not here.

Yet everything feels touched by you.
Your absence wears a shape,
and I have learned to live around it—
like furniture left in a room
no longer meant for comfort.

Your fingers,
invisible,
still trace the hollows of my face
like wind through cathedral ruins,
a reverence in their retreat.

Your voice—a thread unwinding in my ear—
offers the promises you would give,
with none of the weight to hold it.

Were you ever real?
did I really touch you —feel your embrace?
Or have you always been
just the shadow between heartbeats,
-the echo between words?

 I pause and breathe…

A shiver climbs my spine-
like ivy on old stone. 
I am gripped by a phantom wind,
and some part of me
blooms at the thought of you,
despite knowing
you are memory, not form.

This haunting—
A ghost not of loss—
but of pause.

Sometimes I hear the future
breathing beneath the present—
a whisper beneath the noise,
asking if we are done
or simply
waiting.

And as this city lulls me to sleep
as it sings its ancient melody-
I am reminded-
It is hard to bury something
that is fighting to stay alive.