Fingerprints, Faded
I miss when your words had fingerprints on them,
when I could open a paragraph
and feel my name breathing between the lines.
Back then,
I didn’t need confirmation
the way a metaphor leaned too close,
the way a sentence hesitated like it was afraid to say too much,
I knew.
Like seeing my reflection
in a dark phone screen
before it lights up.
Your writing used to look at me sideways
never direct,
always clever,
always pretending it wasn’t about me
while spelling me out in the margins.
I’d read it and smile like someone who found a secret note
tucked into their own jacket pocket.
Now I read you
and I’m lost.
Your words still move,
still sharp and beautiful,
but they don’t reach for me anymore.
They walk past me on the sidewalk
without eye contact.
I’m standing there rereading a line
like it owes me something,
like if I stare long enough
it’ll confess.
Sometimes I wonder
if I don’t cross your mind much these days
if I’m just a closed tab,
a story you finished and never bookmarked.
Maybe my name is dust on a shelf
you don’t bother wiping anymore.
Other times
and this is the crueler thought
I wonder if I’m all you think about.
If you’re hiding me better now,
burying me deeper in metaphor,
changing pronouns like disguises,
writing around me so tightly
even you can pretend it isn’t obvious.
And that’s the thing
there’s no way for me to know anymore.
No signals.
No familiar ache in the syntax.
No line that leans toward me and whispers,
“Yeah, it’s you.”
Your words used to feel like a room
I was allowed to sit in quietly.
Now they’re a house
with the lights on
and the door locked,
and I’m outside
trying to recognize a shadow through the curtains.
I miss knowing.
I miss certainty disguised as art.
I miss the arrogance of reading your work
and thinking, I still live here.
Now I just read
and wonder
who you’re writing yourself toward,
who gets to feel seen
the way I once did
without ever being named.