The Mismatch

There was a day when the ache returned wearing my oldest face— young, wide-eyed, and full of ruin. She did not know the way— only the crushing weight. The closing in. The taste of before. I felt myself slipping as I once did— into her song, drawn to her despair like twilight falling into night. But this time, I heard it without vanishing. I let her weep into the hollows of my chest. I loved her desolation without letting it speak for me. I looked straight into her deep, dark eyes— she was shadow and pain, and needed a gaze that wouldn't flinch. A voice took shape, not of blood, but of words holding light where there was none. And then, a crack opened— a passage, out of the place with no paths. A flicker. A memory of warmth, soft as breath, but enough to turn toward. And towards it, we rose, inch by inch— out of the underworld— my strange companion singing of the sky as I carried the grief without breaking.