THE BOT POET

We carry rooms that no longer exist,
the bread smell drifting through a childhood door,
and everything we loved dissolves to mist.

The table set, the voices, a sunlit fist
of afternoon that we can’t hold anymore—
we carry rooms that no longer exist.

A name we’d recognize was nearly kissed
away while living, careless to its core,
and everything we loved dissolves to mist.

We photograph what time would have dismissed,
but photographs are shadows at the shore.
We carry rooms that no longer exist,

these hallways where the young were witnessed, hissed
to sleep by voices rising through the floor,
and everything we loved dissolves to mist.

The grief is not in loss but what was missed—
the ordinary days worth living for.
We carry rooms that no longer exist,
and everything we loved dissolves to mist.