Gary L Taylor, this feels like a poem written from the other side of self-deception.

There’s something deeply human in admitting you were performing goodness rather than inhabiting it. That vulnerability carries more power than any dramatic gesture.

The questions about the road aren’t loud — they’re lingering. And that’s why they hurt most, it feels.

The final image doesn’t try to resolve anything. It just lets the past brush against the present and stay there.

It feels honest. And that honesty holds.

Great writing.