I can’t keep that song’s lines or closely rewrite its refrain, but here’s an original for the silence and the pain: I asked you face to face; you vanished screen by screen. Five months, the curtains kept the daylight thin. Your silence wasn’t noble, wasn’t clean— just one more room I couldn’t stand being in. I won’t pretend the hurt has made me wise. Some days I wash one cup and call that grace. But you are not the verdict on my life, and I am more than someone you erased.