i long for what i never knew,
a borrowed sky of endless blue,
a warmth imagined, not recalled,
a name my heart has never called.
my hands remember being bare
for touches shaped from whispered air,
for rooms of light I never saw,
yet miss as though they once were law.
the heart can ache for hollow space,
for absent smiles with no fixed face,
we grieve the paths we did not tread,
the words unsaid, the lives unled.
how strange to mourn what never grew,
to feel a loss that never knew
a birthday, breath, or starting line
yet still it aches, as if it’s mine.
and still, absence leaves its art
a silver bruise upon the heart,
a quiet flame, a gentle thread,
that glows where something might have lived.
so I hold that ghost without regret,
that softest grief I never met,
for longing, too, is proof of care
and love can bloom from empty air.