by Jess Lee
It wasn’t love, or if it was, not quite –
not as we name it now, with clearer eyes.
You touched my sleeve. The air forgot the night.
A silence bloomed, and I mistook the signs.
We never kissed. I carry that unkiss
like ash beneath the tongue – bitter, intact.
Your absence shaped more than your presence did.
A trace remains where nothing made its mark.
What was it then? A prelude? Or a test?
The heart rehearsing what it cannot learn?
A pulse half-missed, a name the dusk suppressed,
but which, unsummoned, still begins to burn.
I’ve loved since then. I will again. And yet
you rise, unasked, where memory forgets.
Between Time and Text 