Corey's Collection

The suitcase sat upon the rug, a weight I never thought I’d see, As every soft and folded cloth took pieces of our history. I stood in silence, frozen there, by truths I misunderstood; I watched you pack away your life, I truly thought you never would. The calendar has done its math, the seasons turn their heavy wheel, And time has left its jagged mark on everything we used to feel. You’re choosing paths I cannot walk, to find the soul you need to be, And though it aches, I understand you’re choosing you instead of me. But should the ocean grow too vast, or storms begin to dim your light, I am the harbor, still and deep, through every shadow of the night. There are no tethers on your heart, no anchors pinned against the floor, Just longing for your safe return to find this familiar shore. I hope the world is kind to you, that every sky stays wide and blue, I’ll keep this lantern burning bright with all the love I held for you. Be brave within the wind and waves, and know wherever you may stray, I’m holding peace for who you are, and hoping that you’re quite okay.

My body is a compass and you are the only needle, yet I fear I am pointing toward a North that has scrubbed my name from the map, leaning into a gravity that has stopped pulling back. The air is clotted with the ghost of you, a velvet weight that bruises my ribs every time I collide with your shadow. I wonder if I am a haunting you have already learned to exorcise; a floorboard groan you no longer stop to hear, or a draft you’ve simply learned to shiver through. My heart has memorized the cadence of you, but I stifle the rhythm, tucking your name under my tongue like a cold, smooth stone. I am a vessel for a pulse that is beating against a door feels like you have already locked. No distance can convince the heart of its own desertion. I carry you like a held breath. Painful, necessary, and entirely mine. Even if I am no longer yours.

I was a weight you were never meant to carry and I leaned into you until your foundation began to crack. I brought my storms into your quietest rooms and expected you to be the roof that never leaked. I kept pressing my needs against your spirit like a heavy hand on a glass pane, watching the fractures spread until the person I loved became a map of ruptures. I have drained the battery of your heart and left you with nothing but static. I took your energy in handfuls, never stopping to see that your light was dimming or that your smiles were becoming a performance you didn't have the strength to sustain. Now you are a house with the power cut and I am the one who left every light burning until the wires finally melted and the warmth went cold. There is a hollow silence where your laughter used to be and it is a silence I built with my own hands. I wanted all of you so badly that I ended up with nothing at all. You have no room for me anymore because I have filled every corner of your mind with my own noise, leaving you too exhausted to even remember why you once wanted me to stay. I am the reason you are empty. I pushed until you broke and now I have to live with the fact that I am the only one left standing in the ruins of the person you used to be. I reached for you until there was nothing left to grab and now the silence is the only thing we have left to share.

The world turned into a bright and hollow noise and I sat in the glow of lights that only made the silence in my house feel louder. I knew you were drowning in a season that was already too heavy for you to carry but my heart was a selfish thing that just wanted to hold your hand through the dark. I watched the calendar turn into a list of days longing for a voice I could only hear in my dreams. I wanted to be the sanctuary where you could finally rest but I fear I was just another weight on a mind that was already breaking under the pressure of the cold. You were fighting a war I couldn't see and I was standing on the sidelines with my arms open, wondering why you wouldn't let me help you carry the weight. Now the decorations are coming down and the world is moving on but I am still standing in the exact same spot where you left me. I am carrying the weight of a celebration that never started and a longing that refuses to end. I wanted to be the coat that shielded you from the winter and instead I became the prayer sent into the night, hoping you felt the warmth of my thoughts even when the wind was at its coldest. I remained a steady harbor in the dark, waiting for the storm to pass so I could be the first person to welcome you home.

We turned the late hours into a sanctuary where the world couldn't reach us and we peeled back the layers of our lives until the air was thick with things we never told anyone else. I remember the weight of your trust feeling like a gift I was almost afraid to hold because it was so rare and so quiet. We navigated the dark with nothing but the sound of each other's voices, building a bridge across the miles out of every secret and every jagged truth we finally dared to let go. There was a strange kind of peace in the glow of the screen and the chaos of the map where we were always the last ones left. Every victory we shared felt like proof that we could take on anything as long as we were on the same side and the sound of your laughter was better than any gold. It wasn't just a game to me; it was the way we stayed together when the world felt too big, two ghosts in a digital world holding onto each other while everyone else was gone. I think about those nights now and how they became the foundation of everything I believe about us. You are the only person I want to be awake with when the rest of the world has gone silent and you are the only win I ever really cared about keeping. I carry our conversations in my blood like a secret language and I am still holding onto the trust we built in those long hours, knowing that we were creating something that the morning could never wash away.

I swoon from desire of words from your lips. It feeds my fire, which smoldered on the day that we two met. It flames anew with phoenix wings, to fly into my heart, and like the sunset's silent roar, it thunders ever nearer, the vision so much clearer, than it was right from the start. I tremble in the presence of your love it was always more than enough