Rancid Heart
by Renato Gandia

Lately, I’ve been thinking
about your face. The quiet edges of it,
the way your expression seemed to gather storms
just beneath the surface. Outside my window,
I see your shadow lingering on the asphalt,
a remnant of us etched in the night’s stillness.

Did you know that memories
of our fights come alive at dawn, thick and heavy,
each one settling over me like smoke,
choking off the light, making it hard to breathe?
The weight of our words haunts my chest,
oppresses my heart in ways I can’t explain.

Missing you is a bitter pill,
a stone lodged in my throat, impossible to swallow.
Some nights, I dream of you leaving all over again,
and I wake with the emptiness thick as winter fog.

Yet I keep believing—foolishly, perhaps,
in the fecund, wild possibility of your return,
like a sea of teal flooding my vision,
a colour that never fades but stays just out of reach.

I've been thinking about your face,
its sharpness blurring in memory,
wondering if you’ve ever known what it’s like
to live in the echo of someone,
to carry their shadow like a second skin,
to feel their absence as vividly as touch,
to taste their sweat as rancid as a broken heart.