It’s the kind that saves.
I press my palm to the glass just once.
A silent promise she’ll never hear.
She doesn’t see it.
She doesn’t need to.
But I need her to know that somewhere, someone still sees her.
I walk away before I do something I can’t undo.
The corridor hums with fluorescent light, the air stale with everything unsaid.
By the time I reach the elevator, my reflection stares back hollow eyes, jaw tight.
The mail guy, invisible.
The boy who’s loved her since he was four years old.
I remember her in pigtails, chasing butterflies at the end of my grandmother’s driveway.
The first time she smiled at me, I swear I heard the ocean inside my chest.
She was always the sound of home.
And I’ve spent my whole damn life standing at the edge of it, afraid to knock.
I tell myself it’s enough that she’s free now, that maybe someday she’ll wake and the first thing she feels won’t be the weight of him.
That she’ll stop carrying his ghost in her lungs.
Maybe then when the shaking stops,
when the silence feels like peace instead of punishment she’ll look up and find me there.
Not behind glass .Not pretending.
Just me.
And maybe she’ll finally see what I’ve known since we were kids, she was never unlovable. She was just loved by the wrong man.
Outside, the air is sharp, slicing through me as I step into the dying light. My pulse thrums in my neck, anger, grief, longing, all of it bleeding into one unbearable truth.
I need air. I need distance. But what I really need—is her.
I step out of the building, the city night swallowing me in its neon hum and wet asphalt smell.
The wind hits like a blade, sharp and cold, but I welcome it as something to cut through the knot in my chest.
Down the street, the bar lights flare like fireflies against the dark. The glow spills onto the sidewalk, warm and familiar.
I see him through the glass as I slow, moving just out of reach, Blake, setting up for the night shift, moving with that careless, confident rhythm that always seemed to belong to someone else.
I swallow hard. My hands curl into fists in my pockets, knuckles white.
And there above the soft clink of glasses and murmured greetings, her light shines.
