Uninvited.

When the crickets sing a lullaby

I lay in bed and think…

How does one feel
two things at once?

One way with their heart.
Another with their head.

Tell me—

how can the same body
hold a funeral
and a homecoming

How can my brain be upstairs
boarding up the windows
while my heart is downstairs
leaving the porch light on?

Because you—

you came into my life
like a hurricane.

Unannounced.
No warning sirens.
No time to bring the good chairs inside.

Just—

there you were.

And suddenly
everything I had spent years
nailing down
was airborne.

That’s the only way
love can be explained.

Uninvited.

Because nobody in their right mind
would ask for this.

Nobody says,

Please,
come find every soft part of me.

Learn the floorboards.

Learn which ones creak.

Learn where I keep the medicine
and which nights I need reminding.

Learn how I take my coffee,
how I go quiet when I’m scared,
how I pretend I’m angry
when what I really mean is

please don’t leave.

Nobody asks another person
to memorize them like that.

But you did.

You learned me.

Not the version
I drag out into daylight.

Me.

The crawlspace.

The basement.

The boxes marked
DO NOT OPEN.

The names I used to answer to.

The things I survived
but never figured out
how to bury.

You walked through all of it
like you weren’t afraid of ghosts.

And God—

I loved you for that.

Maybe I still do.

There.

I said it.

Because this poem isn’t about
pretending the fire never happened.

I can stand in the ashes
and still admit

I was warm once.

I was once a fire with just your kiss.

That’s the part nobody tells you
about losing someone.

Sometimes
there isn’t a clean villain.

Sometimes the person who broke your heart
is also the person
who once held it
like they understood
how fragile a thing
it was.

Sometimes the same hands
that taught you safety

Are the hands that break your believing

So my head says:

Remember.

Remember the flood.

Remember how high the water got.

Remember what it cost
to rebuild yourself.

My heart says:

But remember before the rain.

And Jesus Christ,

I do.

I remember everything.

The stupid things.

The sacred things.

The ordinary things
that didn’t know
they were becoming memories.

Your hand on my chin.

The way you said my name.

The way you always made sure I ate.

The weight of your body
next to mine.

The way being loved by you
made the world feel, briefly,

less sharp.

That’s the cruelty of memory.

It doesn’t have the decency
to only preserve the wreckage.

It keeps the wildflowers too.

So how does one feel
two things at once?

Like Appalachia does.

Like a mountain
split open for coal
still growing rhododendron
from its wounds.

Like a river
that can carry a child fishing
in June

and somebody’s whole damn house
in September.

Like loving the rain
and fearing what it can become.

That’s me.

Half warning siren.

Half porch light.

My head
stacking sandbags against the door.

My heart
standing barefoot on the other side

listening for your car, your voice, your song.

And maybe that’s what I hate most.

Not that I loved you.

Not even that some part of me
still does.

It’s that love does not disappear
just because you’ve gathered enough evidence
to convict it.

The heart does not give a damn
about closing arguments.

It does not understand
boundaries,

timelines,

or why sometimes
the kindest thing two people can do

is stop reaching for each other.

My head knows
some doors are supposed to stay closed.

My heart still jumps
when it hears footsteps.

My head says,

We survived this.

My heart whispers,

But what if they came back different?

And somewhere between those two voices

is me.

Trying to understand
that missing you
is not an invitation.

Loving you
is not an invitation.

Remembering the good
is not an invitation.

Because maybe healing is learning

you can love something
and still refuse
to let it destroy you.

Maybe healing
isn’t burning the house down
just because someone moved out.

Maybe you leave the photographs.

Maybe you keep the scars.

Maybe you admit:

Yes.

There was love here.

Big love.

Stupid love.

Kitchen-floor-at-midnight love.

Sunset love.

No sleep love.

Know-every-version-of-me love.

The kind of love
I will probably carry
like these mountains carry old mines—

sealed,

dark,

still there.

No marker on the map.

But no longer
where I make my home.

Because you came
uninvited.

And I loved you
without asking permission.

Maybe part of me
always will.

But listen—

just because my heart
still leaves the porch light on

doesn’t mean

I’m opening

the fucking door.