Vachon Imagined

I met him
not in random circles,
but in planned places,
planned circumstances—

everything arranged
except him.

There was nothing careful
about the fire between us.

It arrived too quickly,
burned too brightly,
consuming oxygen, sleep, reason.

We became the best
and worst of each other
in the same breath,
the same body,
the same bed of flames.

What made it crueler
was how illogical it all was.

He was a man of reason,
of control,
of measured distance.
The kind who could explain away emotions
before they fully formed.

Yet whatever happened between us
moved faster than logic could contain.

Faster than caution.

As though something ancient and reckless
had broken through both of us
before either of us could stop it.

He ran from it
almost as quickly as it arrived,
like if he moved fast enough
he could convince himself
it never existed at all.

And the strangest part
is that I never really touched him.
Not fully.
Not in the ways people assume love requires.

Yet somehow
his memory left marks on me anyway—
invisible bruises beneath the surface,
both disgusting and electric.

Something in me wants to scrub them away,
to call the entire thing madness
and be done with it.

But it always returns.

Not like a memory.

Like unfinished business.

I only know
love does not ask permission
before entering a life.

Sometimes it arrives uninvited,
settles in your chest,
and refuses to leave
no matter how firmly you ask it to go.

I tried to reason with it.
Shame it.
Starve it.

But love does not obey commands.
It answers to something older than pride
and far more stubborn than logic.

I keep trying to build walls against him,
but they are never permanent.
Temporary barricades.
Thin defenses built in exhaustion,
as though distance and discipline
might finally bury
what remains of him inside me.

People say you move on
as though it is a location.

But moved on to where?

I changed routines,
changed thoughts,
changed versions of myself
trying to outrun him,
and still he remains.

Still in my mind.
Still somewhere inside my body
like a spirit that missed its funeral.

There are days
I feel almost free of him,
and then something small—
a sentence,
a silence,
a certain kind of light—
splits me open again.

It is humiliating
how quickly the dead return.

Sometimes it feels less like love
and more like possession.
Like some invisible haunting
I do not know how to exorcise.

I want to cast him out of me.
Reclaim every room
he still occupies in my thoughts.

But some part of me
keeps leaving the door unlocked.

My reaching
only made him disappear further.
His silence
only made me love louder.

We wounded each other
in opposite directions
and somehow both bled the same.

Time passes strangely after a love like that.
The world insists it has moved on
while you continue finding fingerprints
in ordinary places.

The cruelest heartbreak
does not announce itself loudly.
It settles quietly into the walls
like smoke after a house fire.

One moment he was everywhere,
and the next he was gone so completely
it felt unreal—
as though the universe swallowed him whole
and expected me not to notice
the missing light.

And still,
despite the anger,
he remains.

Not fully here.
Not fully gone.

He lingers
like smoke trapped in clothing
long after the fire has ended.

Like a haunting
breathing softly
at the edge of your life,
reminding you that once,
for one brief terrible moment,
you were loved in a way
that ruined your ability
to call anything else love again.

Despite everything,
he remains.

Not loudly.
Not violently.

Just persistently.

Like smoke trapped behind walls.
Like a prayer unanswered.
Like a fire that should have died long ago
but somehow still finds air.

And I fear
he always will.