Broken-Hearted

They ask me how I'm doing... I smile. The kind of smile that deserves an Oscar, an Emmy, a standing ovation. Because nobody applauds the woman who learned how to cry without changing her mascara. Nobody notices how heartbreak can dress itself in confidence. See... I don't look broken. I look productive. I laugh. I create. I go live. I encourage everybody else while secretly wondering who's gonna encourage me. And that's the thing about melancholy... It doesn't always wear black. Sometimes it wears lip gloss and a fresh outfit while bleeding beneath the fabric.

After eighteen years... Eighteen. Years. I had convinced myself that maybe love was a language I would never speak fluently again. Then... There you were. A breath of fresh air after surviving emotional suffocation. You made me laugh from somewhere deep... that place I forgot still existed. You didn't just compliment my face... You challenged my mind. And if you know me... You know my intelligence is the most seductive thing about me. My thoughts have always been my favorite curves. You listened. You understood references other people ignored. Conversations with you felt like jazz... Improvised... effortless... beautifully intelligent. I wasn't just falling for a man... I was falling for how I became when I was around him. Hope looked good on me.

Then... Silence. Not an argument. Not goodbye. Not, "I don't think this is working." Just... Ghost. As if five months could be erased like fingerprints from a crime scene. Tell me... How does someone become invisible without ever leaving your memory? How do you mourn someone whose body is still walking around breathing somewhere while your heart is attending their funeral?

The hardest part wasn't losing you. It was losing the future my heart had quietly started decorating. I had already picked out laughter for the living room. Peace for the bedroom. Late-night conversations for the kitchen table. I had finally unpacked the baggage my marriage left behind... Only to discover I was unpacking it inside another goodbye.

So now... I perform healing like spoken word. Every clap covers another crack. Every smile conceals another storm. Every, "I'm good," is another chapter written in invisible ink. People say, "You're so strong." No... I'm just practiced. There's a difference. Strength doesn't always mean you stopped hurting. Sometimes it simply means you became fluent in hiding the accent of your pain.

But hear me... One day... This broken-hearted poetry will become a love poem to myself. One day I'll stop looking for the man who disappeared... And celebrate the woman who refused to. Because you ghosted me... But I... I refuse to haunt myself for someone who chose not to stay.

And maybe... Just maybe... The saddest melody I ever carried was never meant to be my ending. It was only the rhythm that taught my heart how to survive until it learned to write a different song.