“The Man Who Lives in My Night”

After he leaves her for another woman,
after he teaches her to believe
she is no longer worthy
of love,
of being chosen,
of being his first smile at dawn,
or the quiet echo before his morning thought.

She replaces him with pain,
an old companion,
someone who whispered her name in the dark.
It stays with her through the long nights,
faithful in ways he was not.
She does not trade it for sunlight.
Pain knows her address,
memorizing her phone number.

She learns to stand with the ache.
Not despising its qualities.
a familiar presence in quiet moments,
an inescapable force in her dreaming hours.
She learns to live with it,
learning new rhythms,
carving quiet spaces between the two.

He is the only one who did not leave.
She keeps the hurt like a vow.
not because it is holy,
but because it is familiar.
In her world,
he is the lover who stayed,
faithful as the ache,
her only inheritance of the night.

Every smile she borrows,
every drop of joy,
does not truly belong to her.
Temporary,
a gift borrowed from a daylight,
nor imagine another future.
She settles into the deep darkness,
not wishing for the light,
nor even the peace that follows the ache.

Her pain lives in the silence.
She carries its weight as if it were
her name,
her identity,
her inheritance,
and somehow,
it becomes her freedom,
folded inside the ache.

He is the man who lives in my night.