Bathroom tiles

"Sadness stains my bathroom tiles blue"

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This longing feels wrong, wrong like rain falling upwards.

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Sadness stains my bathroom tiles blue
a soft, seeping, swallowing color
that appears whenever your name
drifts too close to my throat.

It happens in the quiet hours,
when the mirror fogs over
like it’s trying to forget my face,
and the sink hums gently,
as if it knows I’ve been holding
too much of you
in the hollows of my ribs.

I tell myself I shouldn’t feel like this.
You belong to a world
I’m only allowed to watch
through keyholes and passing glances.
But the truth is easier than the process.
Your voice keeps slipping under my skin
like warm water,
turning ordinary moments
into something softer,
something almost sacred.

And so the blue spreads.

It blooms between the grout lines
sprouting it’s ideas,
making the petals fall every time.
I imagine the way you’d hold me
if things were different,
if life had placed us
in the same room,
touching the same skin,
experiencing the same impossible now.

I know I am not your first choice,
nor your second,
nor anything that would rearrange
the order of your days.
I am the echo,
the aftertaste,
the soft shadow trailing behind
whoever truly holds your heart.

Yet I still kneel here
on the cool tile floor,
letting the blue climb my palms
because it is the only place
I can touch you without lying.

This longing feels wrong.
wrong like rain falling upward,
like reaching out to hold a blue flame
that was never meant for my hands,
but I burn myself to it anyway.

I crave the way you make me feel
momentarily seen,
momentarily real,
like my heart wasn’t built
to break in glass shards
where no one bothers to look.

I imagine the day
the blue grows too deep,
too heavy,
and I finally have to drain the room,
letting everything I felt for you
rush out in one great flood.

I imagine the mess afterward,
all the porcelain pieces of me
too numerous to name.

But tonight,
the water is warm.
The blue is gentle.
And I am here,
alone, yes,
but somehow still held
by the echo of you.

Sadness stains my bathroom tiles blue,
yet part of me hopes
you’d love the color,
would touch it lightly,
and understand
that this is what it looks like
when someone misses you
more than they ever meant to.

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