A Thousand Small Goodbyes Poem by Za7ra Sulaiman

Saying goodbye
isn't a single wound—
it's a slow unraveling.
Not a blade, but a thousand
invisible splinters
buried under the skin
of ordinary moments.

The night jolts me awake—
a memory masquerading as a dream.
I drink,
but the emptiness dilutes the wine.
Morning comes,
you don't.
You're not my lover anymore.

I still peer
through the boarded-up windows
of what we once called home.
The chandelier flickers
like a ghost
still dancing to music
we can no longer hear.

I dress like armor,
like distraction.
I walk the longest roads
just to stay moving,
ask red and green lights
for direction.
They blink back blankly:
I don't know.

You once called it
a great love,
said it was for the ages—
but if the story ended,
why am I still
writing you
into every page?

This small town
holds your outline
in every empty chair,
every shadowed alley.
We are no longer 'ours'—
only echoes
on opposite ends
of the same street.

My heart,
my hips,
my spirit,
my trust—
there is no map
left unmarked by you.
You left me
like a bad habit
half-forgotten,
yet I haunt places
you never even entered.

Our anthems play
in unfamiliar places.
A country of us
now exiled—
lawless, unclaimed.
Your hand
once hushed my fears,
now I quiet them alone
with silence
and the sting
of what might've been.

You took too much—
not violently,
but gently,
steadily.
Each moment,
a paper-thin cut
I convinced myself
I could survive.

And still,
I ask the streetlights,
Will it be okay?
They flicker,
and the silence says
what no one else will.

I don't know.