By Crystal Ann
The quiet in our bedroom is a third person now,
a cold space in the sheets where your hands used to find me.
I trace the outline of your back, turned and locked,
a wall built from pixels and the steady, mindless rhythm
of a game that never asks you to be vulnerable.
You sit in your headset, a kingdom of one,
while I am the ghost in the kitchen, the unpaid intern
of our life together. I move through the rooms
collecting the debris of your distraction,
a task list that grows longer while my desire
shrinks to a small, hard knot in my chest.
I used to be the mission. Now I am the furniture.
A soundless NPC you navigate around
to get to the fridge, to the charger, to the bed
where you finally lie down, already gone,
a sigh in the dark that isn’t for me.
I barter in silence. If I do this, will you see me?
If I am quiet enough, small enough,
efficient enough, will you remember
I have a body? That it once made you
set down the controller without saving?
The silence is my answer. A brutal, tender math
where my worth is subtracted by every level you climb.
It feeds a thing in me I thought I’d buried,
a voice that whispers he’s right, you know.
Look at you. Look at what’s left to want.
I am starving in plain sight, offering you
the last good parts of me on a tray,
watching you not look up, not see the feast
you’re letting go cold. This isn’t a partnership.
It’s a one-player game, and I’ve been reduced
to a high score you used to care about.
The door is a question I’m learning to ask myself.
Because this room, this silence, this slow erosion
of my heart into a shape that fits your neglect—
it is not love. It is only a habit
I am finally too tired to maintain.
