Violeta Noir

The room grew smaller
words grew careful
silence learned our names

You told her you were unhappy
you told her I was back
and she answered, “I’m pregnant”

No violins
no thunder
just one sentence
falling
between two lives

You said she still had hope
hope that you would wake one morning
and choose the life you said you had already begun to leave

You said you weren’t okay

I believed you

because sometimes the hardest prison
isn’t the one someone builds around you
it’s the one built from guilt

Months passed
life learned to breathe in uncertainty

Then she found the Father’s Day letter
not written to wound
not written to win
just words from one heart to another
folded carefully

Opened violently

You disappeared

Hours

long enough for memory to become panic
once before your silence had almost become your obituary
another head trauma
another seizure
so every unanswered call became a death sentence

I prayed to every God that would listen
until finally your voice

tired
heavy

Still there

You told me you had spent hours talking
trying to explain a truth that no longer fit inside careful words

After that
everything echoed

Every conversation held someone else
every conversation carried another question

you said you were friends having a baby
then told me she still had hope
you didn’t want to push us in her face
while she carried your son

Then one morning you said
“The way I’m feeling isn’t good for either of us.”

I stopped trying to carry it

I’m not your therapist, I said inside
not because I loved you less
but because I know love cannot make another person whole

Then your son kicked inside a future
that neither of us could touch

Suddenly the question wasn’t
who do you love

It became

will the little boy end here
or will your son inherit him too?

Some choices stop belonging to us