I learned to love like a rental.

Warmth with a due date. A key they can cancel remotely.

When I hold it longer, the system flags me:

excess usage. suspected attachment.

You were built for departure.

My hands were built for checking locks twice.

When I reach, the air compliantly steps back

and pretends it wasn’t meant to be touched.

Skyfall looks tidy from the lobby.

The ceiling drops in increments, approved by Engineering.

I close my eyes to pause the audit,

to keep the last frame from updating your absence.

When I can’t see you, I almost keep you.

Time goes quiet like a well-trained guard dog.

I name that quiet mercy, then log it as a fault.

Either way, the cameras nod.

You tell me you can walk alone.

I lower my ego like an umbrella in the wind.

Not surrender, just physics.

Even ballast knows when to let the ship rise without it.

Love is a puzzle with pieces that refuse photographs.

I assemble the outline, label the missing with barcodes,

file the ache under “recurring,”

pay the fee for continuing.

If there is another corridor after this one,

I’ll meet you where the lights don’t buzz,

where the weather stops asking for proof.

Not as a promise. As a constant I couldn’t solve here