Lessons Missed

I wrote you once, words raw and urgent,

courage inked in desperate loops.

Promises folded inside a letter

that I never sent to the self I knew.

Now the paper yellows and cracks,

and I carry the weight of silence

like a stone in my mouth,

a tongue too late to speak the truth.

If only the words had met the moment,

if only the hands had reached for the chance,

now they lie unused, a locked room

where lessons rot in dusty regret.