Flowchart

I lined all my exes up in a row

like telephone poles through a burning field—

their silhouettes flicker like memories,

and the power never quite reaches the house.

A flowchart, yes—

not of love, but of the slow slide

into the crawlspace of myself.

Each connection a corridor

to another version of me

with worse posture and

more anxious eyes.

It was never them,

not really.

But I could see

my shape warp beside each of them—

a man becoming fog

or a half-finished sentence.

The women I never held

speak louder than those I did—

they are the ghosts of confidence,

the moments I stood taller,

before becoming

the “right now”

before someone else’s “forever.”

My recession began

before I knew how to spell the word.

Long before bills or breakups,

there was the aching crawl

under kitchen tables,

the slammed doors,

the quiet bruises.

The common thread?

Always me.

Always me unraveling.

What part of me buckles others?

I’ve been the last man before the ring,

so many times

I’ve started to taste

metal in my mouth.

Trace it out again.

Run the diagram.

It loops and it loops—

a Möbius strip

of companionship and absence.

I am never alone,

but I live in the deep place

where nothing echoes,

only lingers.

And the flowchart hums quietly

in the background

like a machine

designed to map failure

in the shape of a man.