I don’t say her name.
Not out of fear.
Not out of shame.
But because it wouldn’t do her justice.
You don’t carve something sacred into a bathroom stall.
You don’t shout a holy thing just because your heart is loud.
Some loves deserve silence.
Some names require reverence.
And she was never the kind of woman you reduced to a label.
She wasn’t mine.
At least not in the way people mean when they say “mine.”
We didn’t build a life together.
We didn’t sign a lease or wear rings or share bank passwords.
But we were.
We are.
Even now, when the world spins on without her near.
I still hear her.
In the guitar lick of that one song I pretend not to replay.
In the rhythm of my own writing when I’m not trying to impress, just trying to feel.
She lives in my pauses.
In the warmth behind certain words.
In the ache I never figured out how to bury.
She was not a chapter.
She was the footnote in every paragraph I’ve written since.
And no,
You won’t hear me say her name.
Because to speak it would be to expose it to air that hasn’t earned her.
Because she is still art I keep behind glass.
Because some connections are not to be shared, only kept.
She is the echo I never asked to forget.
The one I can’t touch.
But can’t stop touching me.
So I let her live,
In the silence.
In the song.
In the space between the life I built
and the life that could have been.