GHO$TS WHO DON’T $INK

I keep your name in marginalia,
no crown or sword worn as regalia.

Pressed flowers sleep where margins bleed,
coded for the dead to read.

You chose the port you thought was mine,
arrived too early, calm, on time.

Then learned I waited elsewhere still,
another harbor down the hill.

You paid the bar, you left the seat,
ran city veins on shaking feet.

Not fear that made your stomach spin,
but missing out before we’d begin.

You crossed the rails, the dark, the doubt,
so chance would not erase us out.

You told it later like a joke,
but breathless truth was what you spoke.

I thought you’d scare in ten minutes flat,
inked past, sharp tongue, a life like that.

You stayed. I softened. Armor stayed,
no longer living life afraid.

Relief arrived, not spark or flare,
just quiet ease of knowing there.

You met my gaze without a test,
and let my hypervigilance rest.

By daylight we renamed the weight,
no vows declared, but none felt late.

Two hands raised up in practiced sign,
a harmless oath to mark the time.

You said I painted words like art,
I felt it land the way wounds start.

We dressed our heat in warlike names,
arena dust and victory games.

You claimed the field, I named the scar,
my worthiest opponent thus far.

Then honesty broke through the play,
desire kept too long at bay.

I answered with what shocked you most,
a truth I never meant to boast.

One night unlocked a bolted door,
the key discarded on the floor.

But named the ship already gone,
its sails committed to the dawn.

So I said nothing meant to bind,
just marked the dock you left behind.

You sailed the ship across the blue,
I stayed where truth had once been you.

Lost is not wrong when maps are dead,
some fates left hollow and quietly bled.

Ghosts do not sink when they depart,
but anchor themselves in line and art.

They live in jokes, in names, in ink,
in margins future hands may think.

I keep our memories in florilegia,
a bloom preserved against amnesia. ✦