The Weight of Departures

Who could have known

that love—so vast, so certain—

could shrink into a single breath,

a single pause between words,

a single request for space?

Space. Time.

Clever disguises for distance,

for undoing what once felt infinite.

I let him go,

not because I wanted to,

but because love is not a thing you hold hostage.

And yet, as he walked away,

a quiet terror curled its fingers around my ribs.

Why? Why did his voice crack

like a door being closed?

Why did those words taste like endings?

He left,

and in the time it took for silence to settle,

he found another—

as if love were something you could trade,

as if hearts were interchangeable,

as if I were nothing more than a season

he had outgrown.

And suddenly, the grief was no longer soft.

It became sharp, loud, relentless,

more brutal than the first ache of his absence.

I understand now.

Not just why he left,

but why we unraveled.

A year is not a measure of depth.

Love does not thrive in immaturity,

in restless hands, in moods that shift

like the tide.

We were children playing with fire,

mistaking the burn for passion,

believing love could withstand

our recklessness.

But despite it all,

despite the ruin, the loss, the leaving—

what I felt was real.

What I gave was whole.

And so, I do not curse the past,

nor do I wait for its return.

If we are meant to meet again,

let it be as strangers

who have learned the language of love

without fear, without flight.

Until then, I carry only this:

the quiet knowing that I was here,

that I loved,

that I was never the one who ran.