grief, my boy.

He existed in fragments,

in almosts,

in the way your voice softened around me

like I was something worth holding gently.

I buried you three times before admitting there was never a body to lower into the ground.

Just promises.

Half-finished sentences.

A version of you stitched together from my want and your convenience.

You let me trace constellations into your skin,

let me believe I had found something holy in the space between your hands and mine.

And maybe that was the cruelest part, how real you let it feel.

I mourn you like a widow,

though there are no photographs of us smiling,

no shared apartment with dying plants,

no proof that you’ve ever loved me outside of midnight and loneliness.

Still, grief settles in my lungs like seawater.

Heavy. Salted.

Suffocating me to my demise.

I keep replaying your tenderness like a prayer I made up myself.

The forehead kisses,

the constant reassurance of your presence,

the way you looked at me when nobody else was watching.

But loving someone in private is not the same as loving them at all.

So tell me,

how do I grieve a boy who never existed?

How do I miss someone

made entirely of almost?

Because the person I loved would never have left me shaking on bathroom floor,

never made me question whether pain was the price of being wanted.

The person I loved does not exist.

And still,

I search for his ghost

in the shape of your name.