The Quiet After

By B. Harris

You will not hear this.

There is no audience in this hush.

Even the last of you
has left my bloodstream.

I am done burning at your altar,
where love was a matchstick
and I was the offering.

Once, I circled you like a desperate moon
tethered to your gravity,
praying you’d look up and see
how bright I burned for you.

Now, I drift beyond your pull.

The world did not end
when I unlaced you from my nerves.

Instead,

my spine uncurled like a fist.

Mornings no longer tasted like metal.
Nights no longer echoed
with your static.

You believe peace means you are forgiven,
that this quiet is an open door.

But you mistake the stillness of a healed wound
for the warmth of welcome.

You knock at a house
whose walls could no longer
contain me.

I owe you no explanations,
no softness,
no candle left burning
in any window of my life.

I do not want you,
not in memory,
not in dream,
not in the places I once begged
to be seen.

There is only the quiet now,
wide as a field after the flood.

Mine.

And you,

you are not welcome
in the hush I earned.