Unread

For the girl who never turns the page.

The person I write for

doesn’t read.

She doesn’t know

that the poems are about her.

Doesn’t know

that the commas are placed where her silences live,

that every line break is the breath I held

when she didn’t text back.

She doesn’t read.

Not my work.

Not my face.

Not the way my voice changes

when I’m trying to keep it together.

Not the way I say “I’m okay”

like I’m handing her a bomb

wrapped in bubble wrap

and praying she won’t drop it.

She doesn’t know

that my notebooks are graveyards

for all the conversations

we never had.

That I bury versions of her

beneath metaphors

because I don’t know how to mourn

what I never really had.

She doesn’t read.

But I write anyway.

I write as if words

could make her stay.

As if the right simile

might undo the cold in her tone.

As if a poem

could be a home

she might want to come back to.

I write like it’s my last language

before silence takes me too.

She doesn’t read,

but God, she inspires.

Every time she forgets to ask how I’m doing,

a new line is born.

Every time she says, “you’re too emotional,”

another stanza claws its way

out of my throat.

Every time she forgets I exist

until she needs comfort,

a verse breaks into the world

wearing my ache like armor.

She doesn’t read.

She scrolls.

She listens to songs and never wonders

why I sent that one at midnight.

She hears me say “I miss you”

and answers with a laugh,

like affection is a game

I should know the rules to.

She doesn’t read

the long texts I never send.

The drafts I delete

before they make it to her screen.

She never hears the messages

I record and erase

my voice soft,

then shaking,

then gone.

She doesn’t read.

She glances.

She loves me like a headline,

a highlight,

a flicker of attention

that disappears as quickly as it came.

And I’m still here

writing sonnets in the dark

like a lighthouse

begging the storm to notice

it’s destroying me.

Do you know what it’s like

to love someone who doesn’t read?

To be an open book

in a world full of people

who only like the cover?

To bleed on the page

for someone who keeps their hands clean?

To scream in beautiful language

for someone who doesn’t even speak it?

But still

I write.

Because the truth is,

I don’t write for her anymore.

Not really.

I write for the version of me

who loved her anyway.

Who believed

that love was still worth the ink.

That even unspoken things

deserved to be remembered.

And maybe one day,

she’ll stumble on these poems.

Accidentally.

Casually.

The way she stumbled into my life.

Maybe she’ll recognize her reflection

in a metaphor I tried to forget.

Maybe she won’t.

Either way

the words are here.

And so am I.

Unread.

Unchosen.

Unbroken,

but changed.

Still writing.

Still burning.

Still loving people

who don’t read.