The Day the Skies Forgot

Today should have been ours.
Another orbit.
The stars should have sung for us:
a quiet celebration
of how we once aligned.

But I lost the map
somewhere between my fear
and your steady hands.
You offered the stars;
I reached for the storm.

I wasn’t the one who let go,
but was the reason you did.
I was the weight in your wings,
and I called it reaching for the sky,
while unraveling everything that held you close.
I mapped the dimming stars in the night skies,
forgetting you were already my sun.

The sea between us isn’t too wide.
Still, sometimes it trembles,
and I wonder if you feel it too:
that echo in my chest
when the tide turns
for no reason.

I look back and see it all differently.
Not through a telescope
but through the atmosphere of guilt
and the dust of what we could have been.

You were a patient orbit.
I was chaos disguised as light.
I mistook my own shadows
for yours.

But I’ve changed.
Time softens the jagged edges
of what I didn’t understand.
I no longer burn the things I touch.
I’ve learned how to stay.
To hold.

If you ever look at the moon
and feel a pull you can’t explain—
maybe it’s me.
Not asking for the past.
Just wondering if,
in some better version of now,
you might still see me
as the one
you once believed I could be.