# To My Ex I saw you yesterday on the street corner where we used to meet, where the world narrowed to the width of your smile. You were wearing that blue shirt— the one I loved, the one you swore you'd never wear again after I left. I didn't call out. Some ghosts are meant to pass in silence. Your hair was shorter. You looked happy. That's the cruelest thing about time— it doesn't ask permission to make you into someone the other person no longer recognizes. We were a song once, you and I. Now we're just two people who know all the words but have forgotten how to sing. I wanted to tell you that I still think of you on rainy mornings, that sometimes I reach for my phone before remembering there's no one there. But your happiness is a door I have no right to knock on. So I turned and walked the other way, carrying you like a secret I'm learning to keep from myself.

I don't hurt you.
You are hurt by the beauty
of the little good things
we forgot to do when
there was a reason to do.

The silence hurts you,
in which we breathed unevenly
to find a secret meaning.

The memory of my dream hurts you,
in which someone moves away
among the clouds
of thousands of fireflies
and haunts you…still!

Your left shoulder hurts,
because it is my possession.
The sun hurts you,
because it touches me
differently, in foreign worlds.
The blue-green on the winter sea,
hurts you, as not shared,
and to you, it is dying alive!

They are hurting you ahead—
sunsets and all the past moons
with the merry full moon.
The irises of your eyes hurt
to their brown bottom,
darkened in the fog
on ordinary days and empty nights.

The morning hurts,
in which with someone else
I will share my coffee
after a night of revelation.

The words hurt you,
which you failed to sort
in exquisite verses…
to give them immortality,
and to make me weep with them.

The songs hurt you,
which I did not finish so beautifully
for you.

Your thoughts hurt,
taught to become ours,
after the other has already said them.

Your body hurts,
because it remembers things more than memory,
but I've learnt how to be silent.
The sad directions of your heart hurt,
dare not to shout—
a goodbye...
…never forever.

And all these silent bells
under this desperate sky—
don't hurt me any more,
neither do you...ever!