Still at the Edge

You entered my life the way storms enter summer -
without warning,
without mercy-
and suddenly the pages of me were torn lose,
scattered into a sky I didn't know could break open.

Or maybe you were never a storm.
Maybe you were a song -
the kind that arrives at dusk,
settles beneath the skin,
wraps itself around the ribs-
warm and irreversible-
only to end too softly
for a heart that had already begun building a forever around its echo.

You took my hand,
and the world disappeared into fields.

I ran toward you-
barefoot,breathless-
through a field of fireflies
stitching constellations between us,
tiny lanterns convincing me
this was fate,
this was home.

You were waiting at the edge.

We danced there-
at the lip of sky and ruin-
and for one reckless moment
I forgot gravity.
I forgot the dark below.
I forgot that edges are breathtaking because they are final.

How easily I mistook vertigo for love.

If I had a jar,
I would have sealed my dreams inside it with trembling hands.
You would have been the brightest ache within-
not caged,
never owned-
only kept close enough to survive the leaving.

But dreams are not meant to survive daylight.

I am still standing at that edge,
where the wind remembers your name but the light does not.

The fireflies followed you into the dark.

The fields have forgotten our footsteps.

And you-

you left me suspended between falling and waking,
in a place where I am no longer who I was before you,
and never again who I was with you.