I didn’t think about you today.

Not in passing.

Not in bitterness.

Not in the way silence used to open doors

to memory.

You weren’t in the traffic light reflection,

or in the song that shuffled on.

You didn’t follow me into the grocery store.

Didn’t echo in the mirror.

And when the coffee burned my tongue,

I didn’t think about your laugh.

Or the way you’d call me dramatic

for reacting.

I just drank.

And winced.

And moved on.

There was no phantom pain.

No need to check

if your shadow still waited under the bed.

I didn’t scan a crowd for your face.

Didn’t wonder if I’d see your name

in a headline,

a comment thread,

a wrong number text.

The quiet didn’t stretch like a warning.

It wrapped me.

Like breath.

Like cotton.

Like something that didn’t want anything from me.

And when I realized—

midafternoon,

in line at the bank—

that I hadn’t carried you through the day,

I didn’t cry.

I smiled.

A small, tired thing.

Like I had finally returned

to a place I’d once called mine

before you ever touched it.

You used to live in every hallway of my mind.

Every frame.

Every pause.

But today—

you were nowhere.

And for the first time,

your absence didn’t ache.

It just… made room.

Read the Next Poem

She Asks About Them