I still keep your birthday on my phone. It buzzes every year like a doorbell to a house that burned down. I don’t answer. I don’t delete it either. Some graves you have to tend, even when you dig them yourself. Your sweater still lives in my closet. I don’t wear it. I don’t throw it out. It holds the shape of every promise you broke and smells like the day before the match struck. My friends say “move on” like it’s a bus route. Like I didn’t memorize every stop we used to take together. Like my tongue doesn’t still shape itself around your name before my teeth remember to bite it shut. Don’t ask me to forgive. Forgiveness is a door I won’t unlock for arsonists. My love didn’t die in the fire — it learned to breathe smoke. So I water the blackened garden. I set a place for two at the ash-covered table. I carry your ghost in my lungs and call it living. Not because I want you back. But because some ruins are still home, and some wars end with no one surrendering.