The night I stopped writing for her

For three years, every poem had her fingerprints on it. Every metaphor was a room she used to sit in. Every ending was really just a door closing on her.

Then one night, at some hour that didn't belong to either of us anymore, I wrote a line she couldn't recognize. It wasn't about her. It wasn't for her. It didn't even miss her.

I read it back three times before I understood what had happened. I had finally written something that belonged to me.

I closed the notebook and exhaled — the kind of exhale that takes years to earn.