I was shuffling an old playlist
when a French song came on
and I couldn’t remember their face
but my lips knew every word.

That’s the thing about people
who don’t stay.
They leave things behind.

Ice cream as a punctuation.
The way I fold my shirts now.
Coriander on everything.
that was you.

Someone taught me to sit
with silence
instead of filling it.
Someone taught me
espresso after 4 pm
is self-sabotage.
I still drink it.
But I think of them.

I catch myself eating slower now,
reading a poet
someone underlined for me
in a book I never returned.

The ache is this:
none of them are here.

But what stays —
what stays is
that I am a living museum
of everyone who loved me
and everyone I loved
and some who just
passed through long enough
to change the way
I hold a cup,
or say goodnight,
or chase misal pav across the city
because maybe that obsession
was always about you.

I am made
entirely
of what stayed.

The small, small things
they didn’t know they left.