Unseen Wounds

Fighting With What Is Not Him

I wasn’t fighting him—

I was wrestling a ghost

Wearing his face.

A shadow stitched

From fragments of who I hoped he’d become.

He stood there,

Empty eyes in a body present

But never with me.

I reached for warmth

And held onto frost.

I kept rewriting the silence,

Turning his absence into mystery,

His coldness into depth.

But I was dancing with smoke,

Choking on my own hope.

I wasn’t arguing with words he spoke,

But with the quiet between them.

I wasn’t grieving what I lost—

I was grieving what never was.

He didn’t leave me.

He was never really there.

I built a love

Out of puzzle pieces that didn’t fit.

Named it fate,

Called it divine timing,

All to avoid the truth:

I was fighting with what is not him.

And so, I stop.

No more swinging fists at wind.

No more bleeding for the promise

Of someone who never held me wholly.

I bury the illusion.

Not the man—

But the mirror I held up to him,

The one that reflected only

What I needed to see.

This is not bitterness.

It’s clarity.

And maybe that’s where healing begins—

In choosing peace

Over pretending.