Then, It Was Always Night

We weren’t dying together,
because death belonged
to those who were alone.
Death was lonely.
It only took the lonely.

We were alive,
looking at each other.
All the mirrors were broken,
our faces held in each other’s palms.

Death didn’t come for us.
We were the hum of streetlights,
the wind caught in a half-open door,
maybe a letter left unsealed.

But the city held its breath.

A pair of eyes in the elevator mirror,
staring, then dissolving into air.
A phone screen glowed—
no ringtone, no name.
The ghost of a deleted message
haunted the charger port all night.

Maybe death lingered
in the flicker of a CCTV camera,
in the static of a dead TV channel,
behind the glow of a forgotten Zoom call.

No one noticed.

A man slipped through the subway turnstile,
his shadow untouched.
A woman untangled her headphones,
plugged the silence into her veins.
A delivery driver’s headlights sliced the dark—
parcel abandoned, engine gasping.

Then, night thickened.
Gray buildings drowned in their own shadows.
Screens turned to void.
In the hour when clocks hold their breath,
a voice message dissolved into electrons.

And as the city dreamed,
as pixels faded to ash,
death stayed lonely.
It took the lonely.
It took them mid-swipe, mid-scroll,
mid-breath between two heartbeats.
It only took the lonely.

And in the end,
sooner or later,
everyone became
a draft saved nowhere.

My love,
life…