Maybe I’m not as angsty.
Don’t need to drown

in the drone of lost
love. The haunted house

no longer my dwelling.
My ghost still the past

but not possessed by
obsession. The passage

of time a lapis lazuli–
ten years of wisdom

in which my sadness
may look the same,

but now able to withstand
a storm without music.

(originally published in Stickman Review, Fall 2022)