I hope you know,
I’d still walk back through the fire.
Not because it didn’t burn, but because part of me knows that who I am now needed those ashes.
And I still believe in the warmth we almost became.
I’d still reach out first, still wait in the quiet, like a lantern left lit for someone who never returned.
Still smile through the cracks, still say I’m fine, while fading quietly into the darkness.
I hope you know, I never stopped loving you.
I just ran out of ways to prove it from a place where I was barely surviving.
Even when the silence grew sharp.
Even when I had nothing left but the echo of loving you.
When all I had left was a shadow of effort.
I know now I wasn’t fine, but I was still trying.
You just never cared what the trying was costing me.
Only what it was costing you, it seems.
You looked at my pain, and called it too much.
But I wasn’t broken.
I was just heavy, with things I didn’t know how to name aloud.
You mistook the weight for weakness, not seeing it was proof I’d carried hurt longer than anyone should have to.
Maybe you taught me the softness I now carry.
Or maybe I taught it to you, and we both forgot where it came from.
Some days… you’re the ghost of the most beautiful mistake I still make room for.
Other days… I see clearly how quickly you left, how you placed the weight of it all in my hands as you walked away.
And both of those truths live here, quietly fighting in the dark.
If you came back now… saying you missed me… I don’t know if I’d stay… or run away.
I think I’d smile, tell you I’m okay.
And I would be.
Because yes, you hurt me.
Not by playing games, but by leaving,
Right when I needed someone to stay.
Still, I loved you.
Still, I do.
And somehow, I’m learning to exist in the space between the two.
Still here.
Still me.
Just reshaped.
Still holding space for the version of me you never stayed long enough to see.
The one who wasn’t broken.
Just buried,
Beneath the weight of all the things you didn’t wait long enough to understand.