“Now That I’m Clean…”

Twelve months older.

I won't give in.
Now that I'm clean, I'm never gonna risk it.

Our secret moments in a crowded room —
They’ve got no idea about me and you.
They never did.
We were too careful, too quiet, too ours to be seen by anyone else.

There is an indentation in the shape of you.
You left it in the soft parts of me — the late-night thoughts, the coffee I still take the way you did, the songs I skip because they feel too close.
You made your mark on me, a golden tattoo —
Not ink, but memory.
Not pain, but permanence.

I still think about that day — the mark you saw on my collarbone.
How your fingers traced it like a question you already knew the answer to.
How time started to rust between us — missed calls, unspoken things, silence louder than arguments.

The rust that grew between telephones.
It wasn’t sudden.
It was slow erosion — of effort, of presence, of us.
And I kept dialing anyway, even when the line went cold.

The lips I used to call home?
So scarlet, it was maroon.
That kind of red that only shows up when love runs deep enough to bruise.
Not the blush of first kisses —
But the aftertaste of everything we never said.

You were never mine in the way I wanted.
But you were mine in moments.
In glances.
In breaths held between sentences.

And even now, a year later, I carry those pieces quietly.
Not with regret.
Just with remembrance.

Because what we had — however brief, however broken —
Was real.
And sometimes, real doesn’t need to last forever to mean something.