VERBENA

Your absence is a circle
with no center point,
radius expanding daily,
circumference undefined.

I measured it once
in coffee cups,
in unreturned calls,
in the space between
my outstretched hand
and where you used to stand.

Mathematics offers
no equation for this—
how to calculate
the weight of memory
when mass has left
the room entirely.

So I draw triangles instead,
connect the points
where we almost touched,
and call it geometry
though it's really just
shapes made of waiting.

th
e
str
eet
below

is a river of headlights
flowing toward morning
while I stack papers
and answer phones
and watch dawn creep
up the glass

there's comfort
in being awake
when everyone else
has surrendered
to dreams

the city belongs
to us night owls
to the coffee brewers
the cleaners
the security guards
the ones who keep
the lights on
so others can sleep.

IF (you_leave) {
WHILE (still_breathing) {
memories.push(random_moment());
grief_level += 0.01;
sleep_quality = false;
}
} ELSE {
// This branch never executes
// The conditional always returns true
// This is how heartbreak works
// There is no else clause
}

I wrote this code once
thinking if I could
logic my way through
the ending would compile
without syntax errors.

But grief is not a language
that runs on machines.
It's a system crash
with no recovery disk,
a blue screen
that doesn't reboot
no matter how many times
you press reset.