What if the night kept its colour?

As if nothing was taken from it.
As if love didn’t pass through
and left it’s outline in the dark

I knew you before certainty learned restraint.
Called it fate, because

it arrived without asking.

What if you learned later
how to stay
but you learnt
how to leave the same way

We loved in fragments
rain-slicked evenings,
rooms warmed by breath and laughter,
hands steadying what trembled.

What if in even our lasts
felt held by something larger than us.

I believed that meant permanence.

You searched for me in old songs,
in photographs that once carried weight.
Nothing answered.
I don’t doubt you.
That is the quiet devastation.

What if you stayed when I was unravelling,
not because you wanted to,
but because you could.
I loved because I couldn’t imagine not.

What if you hadn’t offered me an if?
If feeling returns.
If time remembers.
Hope, distilled into politeness.
If that makes me foolish, let it.

I would rather have loved beautifully
than felt nothing at all.