The Unrhymed One

I've tried to talk

but you don't turn away

you just sit there

which is somehow worse than leaving

I reach for you

you let me

and that's when I know

we're already gone

I used to write lines that made you cry

now I write lines and you don't ask why

The guitar's here

I picked it up twice

put it down twice

the third time I just looked at it

and it looked back like: “ yeah. me neither.”

Stare at the page

the page is clean

not because I have nothing to say

but because I have too much

and none of it fits

into a chorus

I always leaned on the songs I write

to build a bridge over every fight

but what if the bridge was just a lie

and the distance was always the real sky?

I've tried to write this a thousand times

but the only honest line doesn't rhyme

it just says: “ we don't talk anymore”

and that's not a song

that's a door

So I sit here

not numb

just sure

that tonight

the words won't come

because they finally learned

to shut up

There were nights you didn't sing along

but you'd listen

and that was your song

Now silence isn't broken

it's just… chosen

like a scar you stopped touching

because it finally healed wrong

I've turned each memory inside out

not to find love

but to find what killed it

slowly

politely

without a smoking gun

If love is here

I can't make it show

maybe love was never for showing

maybe love was for knowing

and we stopped knowing

two winters ago

I always leaned on the songs I write

to pull us back when things don't seem right

but what if things have been right all along?

what if right is just a quiet wrong?

I've tried to write this a thousand times

but the only honest line doesn't rhyme

it just says: “ I don't know who you are anymore”

and that's not a lyric

that's the war

So I sit here

watching the floor

because tonight

the words won't come

and for once

I'm not sorry anymore

(spoken over the chords, not sung)

If one last verse could change your mind…

no.

that's the problem.

I don't want to change your mind.

I want to understand why I have to.

Every thought just slips away

not because I'm lost

but because I'm finally

where I'm supposed to be:

nowhere near a rhyme

I leaned on songs like leaning on a ghost

thought if I wrote it well enough

I'd feel you the most

but you can't write someone back

into a place they left

not even with the prettiest metaphor for theft

So I sit here

not even feeling dumb

just feeling the weight of a thousand unrhymed truths

and the smallest, strangest, softest…

peace.

Because tonight

the words didn't come

and that's the first honest thing

I've written in months.