Once, his days were colored by her voice,
a sound so bright it painted the silence,
made even the smallest hours
feel like they carried meaning.

He remembers it still,
like a lantern's glow kept in a jar,
warm, flickering,
but dimmer each time he opens it.

There was a season
when her laughter was the wind in his sails,
when every "good morning"
felt like a promise the world was kinder
than he ever dared believe.

But seasons do not last.
Even spring, with all its blossoms,
must give way to the weight of time.

And so the days pass.
He still feels her,
like the ghost of perfume on an old scarf,
or the echo of footsteps in an empty hall.
It lingers, but softer now,
a whisper instead of a shout.

This is how love fades,
not with the cruelty of sudden silence,
but with the gentleness of distance,
a slow unraveling of threads
that once held his heart together.

He does not curse it,
nor cling to it as he once did.
For he knows now,
love does not vanish,
it transforms.

And one day,
when the ache is only a shadow,
he will look back at her smile in memory,
and instead of breaking,
he will simply whisper,

"thank you."

He once thought the hardest part
was losing her,
but he was wrong.

The real wound came later,
when he saw her laugh with someone else,
that same laugh that had once
split his silence wide open.

It was not betrayal,
not even cruelty,
just the simple cruelty of life,
how quickly the sacred
becomes ordinary again.

Another would learn her pauses,
her little turns of phrase,
the way she tilted her head
before saying something soft.
Another would walk the paths
he thought were carved for him.

And he,
helpless,
watched the living memory unfold.
Not a ghost of her,
but a ghost of himself,
standing outside the firelight,
unwelcome, unnecessary,
a chapter left open
but never read again.

Some nights he would whisper,
not to her,
but to the empty air,
"I am still here,
bleeding quietly,
while you write your next beginning."

For ghosts do not come from the dead,
they come from the living,
and nothing is crueler
than seeing your forever
become someone else’s beginning.

He gave her his dawns,
his nights, his trembling heart,
but when silence came,
her sorrow leaned heavier
for another name.

She wept for a ghost
that was never hers,
and he, the Fool,
learned the cruelest truth,
that love can be given,
yet grief belongs elsewhere.

There were two travelers who once found each other at a crossroads.
Both carried broken maps, torn by storms and years of wandering,
and for a time, they walked together.

They promised, or so the man thought,
that if the roads grew too heavy,
they would pause, mend their maps,
and meet again when they were whole.
To him, it was not the end,
but a waiting place,
a promise left under the shade of a tree.

But to her, it was farewell.
Not cruel, not heartless,
simply the closing of a chapter she had already read through.
And so while he lingered beneath the tree,
believing she would return,
she had already turned toward another path,
her footsteps steady, her gaze fixed forward.

He did not hate her for this.
How could he?
They were both free to walk where they wished.
But as he watched her figure fade into the distance,
he could not help but wonder,
how could love that once felt like fire in the veins
be set down so quickly, as if it were nothing more than ash?

He searched his chest for answers.
Perhaps he had carried their love as a seed,
waiting for spring,
while she had carried it as a bloom,
beautiful, fleeting, and already finished.

And so the man stayed by the tree,
haunted by the weight of a promise
he now realized was only his.

They say every fable ends with a lesson,
but not every lesson comes with closure.

The Fool did not return to the valley to seek the Fox again. He knew the forest kept what it wanted, and the Fox was now part of that hush.

For two moons, she had been his spring,
a season too brief to be called forever, yet deep enough to change the soil where he stood.

Her laughter had been the wind in his sails,
her presence a shelter against nights when the cold bit deeper than loneliness. And for that short, blazing time, he had believed in warmth again.

But stories are not meant to be cages.
They are meant to be carried, to be told and retold until the ache softens, and the lesson remains even when the faces fade.

So the Fool stepped away from the valley.
He did not rush, nor look back more than once. Because some love is not meant to be reclaimed, only remembered.

And in the quiet of his journey, he realized the truth:
He had loved the Fox as wholly as a heart could love, and though the story had ended, it had given him something precious, the proof that he could love again.

The valley remained behind him.
The road stretched before him.
And somewhere, far away,
the Fox’s laughter still lived in the wind.

Years have passed since I last heard the Fool speak of the Fox.

Time, as it does, has softened the lines of his face and bent his shoulders forward, but it has not dulled the weight in his voice when her name, though he never spoke it, lingers in the air between sentences. Even silence has a way of carrying her.

I have walked the valley as he once did, retracing the paths he described. I have stood beneath the great oak where the Fox would hum, leaned over the river’s edge where laughter once spilled like water, and felt the stillness that remains. It is not an empty stillness, no, it is a stillness that remembers.

People here speak of the Fox and the Fool in hushed tones, not as a love story, but as a warning. They say it is easy to lose what is rare, and even easier to convince yourself it will wait for you. They say trust is not something you hold in your hand, but something you breathe, and once you choke on it, the air is never the same.

The Fool no longer searches. That part of him has gone quiet.

But when the wind moves through the valley just right, I have seen him pause, head tilted, eyes narrowing, as if some faint thread of that strange, foxlike laugh has drifted back to him. And every time, his face tightens with that same expression I saw by the fire years ago: the silent confession that the most precious thing he’d ever been given was also the one he shattered with his own hands.

He told me once, when I was younger and thought I understood the world, "If you ever find a fox, hold it gently. Never grip too hard, never doubt without cause. Foxes don’t return once frightened, and there are some silences you cannot call back."

I did not understand then.
I do now.

The valley has many stories, of storms, of seasons, of strangers who came and went, but none linger like theirs.

Because the Fool’s tale is not about the Fox’s leaving, not really.

It is about how a man can ruin his own salvation without meaning to, how he can mistake the echo of old wounds for truth, and how he can spend the rest of his days breathing in the absence of something that once made him whole.

And sometimes, when the nights are long and the moonlight cuts through the trees, I wonder if the Fox remembers him, too. I wonder if, somewhere beyond the valley, there is another fire, another listener, hearing the story from the other side.

They say the Fool was not always alone.

I know this because, years ago, on nights when the fire burned low and the wind howled against the shutters, he told me his story.
He didn’t tell it like a tale meant to entertain.
He told it like a man laying out pieces of himself, as if speaking the memories aloud might keep them from fading, or maybe, as if saying them aloud was the only way to bear their weight.

It always began the same way.

"The first time I saw the Fox," he would say, "it was standing in the light just before dusk, that strange, golden hour where the world looks softer than it really is."

He told me how the Fox’s fur caught that dying sunlight like embers holding their last heat, and how its laugh, gods, the laugh, bent the air around it. Not a common laugh, but one that could slice through the stillness and make even the trees pause, as though they feared missing it.

The Fox did not give that laugh freely.
To strangers, it was quiet, even withdrawn. But to those it trusted… it came alive. Wild. Untamed. Pure.
The Fool had been one of the chosen few.

He said they were an unlikely pair, the Fox, with eyes like sharpened amber, and himself, a man weighed down with shadows he’d never shaken. The Fool had lived with silence for so long that he’d begun to believe it was safer that way. Yet the Fox slipped past his guard with the ease of sunlight through cracks in old stone.

"It never tried to fix me," he told me once, voice low. "It just… stayed. And that was enough."

The valley became theirs. They walked the narrow paths beside the river, where the Fox would tell stories so absurd that the Fool would laugh until his ribs ached. They would linger beneath the great oak, where the Fox would hum tunelessly, and somehow the Fool would feel lighter just hearing it.

The Fool learned the cadence of the Fox’s steps, the tilt of its head when it was amused, the slight pause in its breathing when it was about to say something it thought might be too much. The Fox, in turn, learned the way the Fool’s shoulders eased when rain was coming, how he would bite the inside of his cheek when swallowing hard truths, and how his eyes softened when looking at things he feared to lose.

They were different in every way, yet they fit.

The Fool told me once, with a distant smile, "It felt like finding a missing part of myself I didn’t know I’d lost."

And yet, even as he spoke of it, there was always something in his voice, a tremor, almost too faint to notice, that told me he had known, even then, that it could not last.

Because every perfect day in the valley carried the whisper of an ending.
The laugh that filled the air could be stolen by silence.
The warmth of a shoulder against his could turn cold in an instant.
The paths they walked together could one day be walked alone.

The Fool said he pushed those thoughts away at the time, telling himself not to ruin what was still his to hold. But memory is cruel, it does not only remember the joy, it remembers the shape of the loss before it comes.

And then, one day, the Fox was simply gone.

No storm. No quarrel. No final words.
Only absence, sharp and sudden, as if the forest itself had reclaimed what it had lent him.

He searched, not wildly, but with the quiet desperation of a man trying to prove the past was real. The valley, once filled with the Fox’s voice, seemed larger now, its silence heavier. Every place they had been together was still there, but smaller, emptier, like an echo stripped of its sound.

He told me that the weeks with the Fox had been the shortest and most important in his life. That for the first time in years, he had believed his heart could open again. That love could live even in a man who had learned to bury it.

And then, as the firelight flickered across his face, he said the words I will never forget:

"This," he murmured, his gaze fixed on nothing, "is the most beautiful thing I have ever ruined."

After that, he didn’t speak for a long time. But I understood something then, the story was not for me, not really. It was for the Fox, wherever it had gone.
A story meant to keep it alive, even if only in the telling.

Once, in a quiet valley, there lived a fox unlike any other.
Its fur caught the light like fire in the dusk,
and its laugh, yes, the fox laughed,
was so strange and sharp that even the trees seemed to lean closer to hear it.

The fox did not laugh for everyone.
To strangers, it was cautious, silent, almost shy.
But for those it trusted,
the laugh would pour out like a stream after rain,
wild and unafraid.
It was a gift.

In time, the fox chose to walk beside a man.
The man carried old wounds hidden beneath his skin,
scars left by shadows he once mistook for friends.
And though the fox was nothing like those shadows,
the man could not stop himself from seeing ghosts in every movement.

One day, he saw the fox wander through the valley alone.
It was not strange, the fox was free, after all,
but in the man’s mind, the scene twisted,
turning into whispers of deceit.
Old fears rose like smoke,
and before he could catch his breath,
his tongue became a blade.

He accused.
Not softly, not carefully,
but with the force of someone certain they had been wronged.

The fox stopped laughing.
It did not growl, did not bare its teeth.
It simply looked at him,
and in that look was the weight of something breaking.
Without another sound, it turned away
and vanished into the forest.

Seasons passed.
The man walked the valley every day,
listening for the laugh that once followed him like sunlight through leaves.
But the air stayed still.
The forest stayed silent.

Only then did the man see the truth:
The fox had not betrayed him.
It had only been living, breathing,
trusting him to understand.
And he had answered that trust with suspicion and fire.

In the valley, the man grew old.
And sometimes, in the distance,
he thought he heard that strange laugh again,
but it was only the wind,
mocking him with the memory of what he had thrown away.

There was once a person I remember,
let's still call them Echo.
Not for their meaning,
but for their noise.
Not for memory,
but for how impossible they were to forget.

Echo didn’t speak. Echo overwhelmed.
Decibels over decency,
volume over value.
Always shouting,
always stepping over lines
drawn by people too kind to fight back.

Strangers saw the costume,
soft-spoken, polite, reserved.
But that was just the audition.
Acquaintance cued the transformation.
Echo unleashed like rusted gates unhinged,
screaming at the world like it owed reverence.

But the tragedy was this:
Echo mistook volume for confidence,
insults for charisma,
mockery for charm.
Words wrapped in sarcasm,
daggers dressed as jokes.

Humor was the shield,
but only for Echo.
For everyone else, it was shrapnel.
Every “just kidding”
left a scar behind.
Every laugh felt like bleeding.

Echo attacked without conscience,
like a sword with no handle,
slashing friend and foe alike.
There was no reasoning.
No moral compass.
Just chaos wearing a grin.

Confront Echo?
They'd spin it.
Call it honesty.
Call it realness.
But raw sewage is honest,
and no one wants to swim in it.

Echo didn’t want growth,
just permission to stay broken.
Echo didn’t want change,
just applause for staying the same.
And those who clapped?
They were cowards, too.

They wore silence like armor,
confused tolerance for loyalty.
But enabling rot
only grows the mold.
And mold doesn’t care who breathes it in.

Echo believed adjustment was a one-way street,
that everyone else should bend,
fold,
shrink
to fit the tantrums.
As if being known
meant being excused.

But what Echo never understood,
and never will,
is that decency isn’t negotiable,
and being loud
doesn’t make you heard.

Because Echo was never brave.
Just unfiltered,
unrefined,
unaware.
A storm with no direction,
a tantrum with a name.

Echo never wielded words.
They bludgeoned with them.
They didn’t connect,
they conquered.
Not because they were clever,
but because no one dared to mirror the cruelty back.

And here’s the final cut:
Echo wasn’t misunderstood.
Echo was just exhausting.
Echo was never excluded.
Echo was evicted by peace.

Let Echo howl in circles.
Let every soul who shares that skin
feel the blade of this truth:
you are not feared because you're strong,
you’re avoided because you're intolerable.

And no, it’s not the world’s job
to cradle a blade
just because it came from you.

The poet always wrote of leaving.
Not in grand, theatrical exits,
but in slow retreats,
half-answers, tired eyes,
and doors that closed more gently than they should.

There was kindness in the poet,
a softness rarely shown in full,
but it flickered,
burned out before it could ever warm a room completely.

They arrived with good promises.
Words stitched from hope and desperation,
trying to rewrite an ending they’d already rehearsed too many times.
Each stanza carried a vow:
This time, I’ll stay. This time, I’ll be better.

And for a moment, the rhythm held.
The poet laughed like someone who had finally unlearned the storm.
They listened. They stayed present.
They remembered birthdays.

But the silence came back,
not the peaceful kind,
but the one that curled at the edges of conversations,
the one that asked others to tiptoe around shadows
that had no names.

People tried.
Of course they did.
They folded patience into everything,
turned misunderstandings into metaphors,
turning pages, waiting for the poem to shift.

But the poet always returned to the beginning.
To mistrust dressed as wisdom,
to withdrawing before being misunderstood,
to believing love was a test of endurance,
not a space to rest in.

The pages wore thin.
Not from anger,
but from exhaustion.
No one wants to keep reading
when the story refuses to grow.

And the poet,
they knew.

They knew where it all frayed,
knew which line broke first,
which habits returned quietly like old houseguests
never truly gone.

They weren't blind.
They watched themselves ruin what they once prayed for.
Not with intention,
but with patterns they couldn’t ****,
and softness they couldn’t hold.

And as the final verse trembled to a close,
no anger, no pleading, no regret spilled across the page.
Just a familiar stillness,
the kind that comes when a person
has always known
how their story ends.

It's the small routines that bruise the hardest,
a message left unsent,
a joke half-formed with no one to send it to.
Not tragic. Just unfinished.

There's a certain way the day folds now,
like it skips a line only I notice.
Coffee tastes fine.
Mornings still happen.
But something feels like it forgot to arrive.

Names don't come up anymore,
but there's a pause where they used to.
Like the world's moved on
and my memory's still catching the bus.

I scroll less.
Talk less.
React slower.
Not because I'm sad,
just because fewer things feel like mine to respond to.

It's not about wanting anyone back.
It's not even about love.
It's about remembering what it felt like
to matter in someone's day
without trying.

And yeah,
maybe that was once,
or maybe I imagined most of it.

Either way,
I miss everything
that used to feel
a little bit like home.

She said it like a memory
she didn't care to keep
as if saying it aloud
would finally empty it from her chest.

He was once hers.
She was once his.
Two sentences with a shelf life,
said like an obituary
for something that died
before they even noticed it was sick.

There was no crescendo,
no last dramatic scene.
Just a series of quiet exits,
a laugh that didn't reach the eyes,
a message left on read,
a promise that showed up late
and never stayed.

And he?
He didn't even flinch.
Didn't ask for a second chance,
didn't fight for the version of her
he once thought he deserved.

Because maybe he knew.
That everything she said
was the echo of his own undoing.
And maybe he was tired,
not of her,
but of being the man
who only learns when it's too late.

He walks around now,
shoulders light,
heart hollow,
cold, but not frozen.
The kind of cold
you only feel after too many nights
staring at the ceiling,
wondering why the silence
started sounding like home.

And if you ask him what happened,
he'll say this with a calm so sharp
it could cut glass:

“Nothing.
Everything just went the way it always does.”

They stopped checking the clock.
Not because time healed anything,
but because time
stopped asking if they were okay.

Some days wore the face of routine,
brushed teeth,
answered calls,
nodded in the right places.
But beneath the rituals,
something hollow played house.

The heart became a landlord
of too many vacant rooms.
Echoes moved in.
Old voices. Unsent replies.
The kind of silence
you can trip over.

They tried planting hope in old soil,
but nothing took root.
Even sunlight felt staged,
like a set piece in a play
they forgot the lines to.

Laughter?
It came like a guest who forgot to knock,
stayed too long,
left without saying goodbye.
They didn’t chase it.
They just cleared the cups.

There were no breakdowns.
Only hairline cracks,
quietly running their course
through bone and habit.

People called it strength.
But it was mostly muscle memory.
The body, after all,
learns how to stand
even when the soul
has long sat down.

They stopped writing about healing.
Started writing about ceilings,
how low they felt,
how often they collapsed
without warning.

And still,
they kept walking.
Not forward,
not toward anything.
Just…
walking.

Because the cruelest part of pain
is that it doesn’t always scream.
Sometimes,
it just stays.

There's a kind of love that makes you second-guess your sanity.
Not because you're unstable, but because every time you ask,
“Are we okay?”
you're met with a sigh, a side-eye, or silence.

And somehow, that simple question
born from care, not control
becomes the thing you're made to feel guilty for.

So you adjust.
You water yourself down.
You hold back the words.
You tell yourself, “Maybe I am overthinking.”
You rehearse the timing of your concerns,
hoping next time, they'll be received better.
They're never received better.

Until one day, it hits you:
Love is not supposed to feel like trespassing.
You shouldn't feel the need to apologize
for needing to feel secure.
You shouldn't feel punished for caring too obviously.
Needing reassurance doesn't make you clingy,
it makes you human.

The problem was never that you needed too much.
The problem was that you asked someone
who offered too little.

And maybe that's what we all learn too late,
that love isn't proven in grand gestures or promises.
It's proven in the small moments,
when you say, “I'm scared,”
and they don't make you feel ashamed for it.

So here's the truth, simple and undramatic:
If you had to beg for the bare minimum,
you weren't loved
you were just convenient
until your honesty became inconvenient.

Waking up feels like a task.
Breathing, an obligation.
Each day repeats with no meaning.
I move, because stopping feels worse.
But moving leads nowhere.

People say, “keep going.”
They don’t know what they’re asking.
They’ve never carried this weight.
Or maybe they have, and they’re lying too.

Food has no taste.
Sleep brings no rest.
Laughter sounds distant.
Hope feels fake.

There is no dream.
No fire.
No reason.

I do what’s needed.
I wear the face.
I show up.

But inside,
Nothing changes.
Nothing feels.

Living isn’t living.
It’s just not dying yet.

It wasn’t the act,
but the knowing.

The way silence held the weight
of a promise once made,
then broken
with ease.

Not a mistake,
a decision,
deliberate,
measured
in the echo of things once said.

“I won’t, I promise.”
became
“it just happened.”

But nothing just happens
when you already know
what it would do
to someone
who trusted you
anyway.

They watched the ground split open
and still walked
the fault line.

Not blind.
Just willing.

And I, the after.
The leftover ache.
Learning again
that people can mean what they say
only until it’s inconvenient.

I don't remember when it started.
The silence.
The leaving.
The ache that never asks for attention,
but never stops asking to be felt.

People say time heals.
I think it just teaches you how to walk
while carrying everything you've buried.
Grief has no finish line.
It just learns to sit beside you,
uninvited,
unmoving.

I've lost more than names.
I've lost voices I used to hear every day.
Hands I used to hold.
Warmth I used to believe would stay.
And not all of them died,
some just left,
as if I was easy to unlove.

My father is a memory now.
So are my dogs.
So are the parts of me
that once believed the world could be soft.

And the worst part?
I keep trying.
I still open up,
still let people in,
even when the past keeps warning me not to.

But they always go.
Quietly.
Suddenly.
Like they were never here to begin with.

Sometimes I wonder what's wrong with me.
Other times I'm just too tired to wonder.

I laugh with people.
I listen.
I stay up helping everyone else heal,
but I come home to an empty inbox.
To a room that forgets I exist
the moment I close the door.

It's not just loneliness.
It's being unseen,
even when you're right in front of them.
It's realizing your absence
doesn't interrupt anyone's life but your own.

I've cried in the dark
so no one would have to carry it.
I've hidden so much pain
just to be easier to love.
And still, they leave.

Still,
they leave.

I wish I was cold.
Detached.
Untouched by it all.
But I'm not.
I'm soft.
I'm breaking and still offering my hands.
I'm hurting and still hoping someone
might choose to stay.

Even now,
I want to be seen.
Not for what I pretend to be,
but for all of it,
the mess,
the ache,
the heart that never stopped opening,
even when it kept getting torn apart.

If I am a story,
I am one no one finishes reading.
But I write myself anyway.

Just in case someone
ever wants to know how it ends.

It wasn't just someone walking away.
It was the quiet that followed.
The kind that sits in your chest
long after the door has closed,
echoing in a house that once felt full.

I lost the way I spoke without thinking.
I lost the weight of being understood.
I lost the habit of reaching for a hand
that's no longer there,
the instinct to share something small,
a thought, a laugh, a bad day,
and the grief when no one replies.

There are no loud endings.
Just days that look the same,
measured only by what's missing.
Sleep that doesn't rest,
meals eaten out of necessity,
a world that keeps spinning
when I feel stuck in a moment
that already passed.

I lost more than I can explain,
and maybe I'm still losing.
Not in pieces,
but slowly, quietly,
in ways no one sees.

Funny,
how people break promises
like twigs underfoot,
loud enough to hear,
small enough to ignore.

They hand you a vow
with velvet words,
tie it in ribbons,
say "You can trust me."
You do.

Then comes the silence.
The flinch.
The "Why are you so sensitive?"
As if it wasn’t them
who lit the match
and called the smoke your imagination.

They break it,
the promise, the trust,
sometimes the last bit of you
that believed people mean what they say.

Then they watch you bleed
and ask why you’re making such a mess.

If I disappear quietly,
don’t paint me as a tragedy,
just remember I was always trying.

Trying to do better,
for everyone, for myself,
even when I was running on empty.

I reached out first.
Again and again.
Fought through silence,
through the ache of being easy to forget.

I stayed kind
when the world gave me every reason not to be.
I answered quickly,
waited slowly,
hoped stupidly.

All I ever wanted
was to matter without having to fight for it.

But I got tired of proving I deserve space.
Tired of showing up for people
who didn’t notice when I went quiet.

"Trying to do better",
that was always my line.
Even when I didn’t know what better looked like anymore.
Even when it felt like I was the only one still trying.

So if one day I don’t make it,
don’t say I gave up.
Just say I ran out of places
to put all the weight I carried
for far too long
without anyone noticing.

I never wanted anything more
than to be okay.

I swear,
I tried.

There's a light
coming in under the door.
Too dim to be helpful,
too steady to ignore.

You forgot what you came here for,
but now that you're here,
you stay anyway.

A memory brushes past.
Not clearly.
Just enough to make your chest tighten
without knowing why.

The room feels too still.
You hear your own breathing,
then try not to.

Something inside wants to speak,
but the words don't fit right.
Like shoes a size too small.
You leave them at the threshold.

The silence turns warm.
Not comforting,
but familiar.
You've met it before,
and it hasn't changed much.

Then,
a shift.
Barely there.
The kind that makes your eyes sting,
but not from pain.

You look away.
Or maybe inward.
And just like that,
you feel everything,
then nothing,
then everything again.

Even metaphors get tired
when they start meaning exactly what they say.
No veils. No cleverness.
Just weight.

I used to write in symbols,
now everything sounds like a flat line
dressed in rhythm.
Not dead,
just uninterested in pretending.

There's no poetry in routine.
No metaphor for fading.
It just does.

Somewhere, a line I never said
keeps repeating itself in silence.
And that's the only echo left.

I stopped looking for shape in the noise.
It no longer bends for me.
Even the static feels deliberate now.

I still write,
but not for anyone.
Not even for myself.

Just to see
if the page will flinch.

You talk like you know something
but for all your noise,
you still can't name what I did.

Not clearly.
Not once.
Just scattered words,
bent into shapes that fit your story better than the truth ever could.

You saw ten seconds of me.
then made up the rest.
Convenient, right?
To turn a joke you didn't get
into a crime that never happened.

You never asked.
Never checked.
Just decided.

And now you speak with such certainty,
as if twisting my words
makes yours hold weight.

You mocked how I speak
because you couldn't understand it.
You called it fake
because real things confuse people like you.

You wanted a version of me that you could condemn
without guilt.
You needed someone to blame
so you picked the one who didn't fight back.

You called her names,
not because they were true,
but because you were out of arguments.
When you have nothing to say,
you start reaching for appearance.

You said I redirect blame.
Show me.
Where?
What did I do?

You can't.
Because you don't have facts.
Just feelings.
Just whispers you turned into headlines.

You talk like you're sharp,
but all I see is pride in a house of cards.
So desperate to be right
you forgot to be honest.

So speak.
Twist.
Perform.

Just don't pretend it's truth
when you still
can't even say
what it is
you're so angry about.

I was just being myself.
that's all it ever was.
no hidden meanings,
no hearts being passed around,
just someone healing,
trying to stay kind.

I laughed in spaces that felt safe,
joked around in places where I thought
I was understood.
not everything was a signal.
not every word meant more than it said.

but people like to watch
and fill in the blanks
with their own versions of me.
it's easier that way,
to turn a person into a rumor
than to ask them how they really feel.

they said they respected my privacy,
but what do you call it
when you're left out of conversations
you didn't even know you were in?
when sarcasm starts to sound familiar,
and silence feels like a choice?

I explained myself once.
twice.
maybe more.
but no one ever asked again.
they just looked,
and decided.

and maybe this won't mean anything,
or maybe it'll sting a little,
if the shoe fits.

but if you ever wonder why I stopped trying,
it's because friendship shouldn't
feel like defending myself
in a room full of people
who once called me home.

It wasn't anything special,
just a way of showing up,
laughs a little too loud,
says things without weighing them,
because not everything
needs to mean something.

People watched from the edge,
turned moments into stories,
shared glances like headlines.
Suddenly, I was someone
they had figured out
without asking.

I've seen the way
quiet shifts in a room,
how sarcasm replaces names,
how people choose
what fits their version of you
and stick with it.

They said they cared,
said they respected distance,
but only when it made
enough sense to them.
Everything else?
Fair game for guessing.

So I stopped explaining.
Not out of pride,
just exhaustion.
Some truths aren't meant
to be repeated
just to be ignored again.

Not everything I do
is a secret message.
Some things are just me,
existing,
without needing
to be decoded.

If it looked a certain way,
it probably did,
to those watching
without context,
without asking,
but still certain they knew.

I’ve been okay lately.
Not perfect, but breathing.
The kind of healing where
you stop checking their profile,
but still hear their name in silence.

It’s not love anymore.
Not wanting them back.
Just… this quiet ache
that shows up
when the world slows down.

I miss the version of me
that existed when I thought
forever was real.
Not because of them,
but because I was softer.
Lighter.

Now, I walk steady.
I laugh without forcing it.
But some nights,
I still feel like junk left on the curb,
not because I still love them,
but because I remember what it felt like
to be someone’s home.

I came across a picture today,
a moment frozen, bright and full of life.
She was smiling—so effortlessly,
like the past never weighed her down.

She found her way, I see it now,
embracing all the things she left behind.
The hobbies she once set aside,
the laughter she forgot how to share—
they are hers again, and they shine.

But where does that leave me?
The one left behind, standing still,
watching from a distance,
realizing that I have nothing,
not even a place to start.

She rediscovered herself,
while I am still sifting through ruins,
searching for pieces of me
that I never thought I’d have to rebuild.

I was always a part of something,
tied to a life that no longer exists.
Now, I face the question I never dared ask:
Who am I, when I am only me?

The world moves forward, time doesn’t wait,
and I know I must start again.
But every step feels heavier,
every day feels longer,
and the path ahead is one I have to carve alone.

Maybe one day, I’ll understand.
Maybe one day, I’ll smile like that too.
But for now, I am just trying—
trying to begin from nothing.

The weight feels lighter as days go by,
A fragile peace grows in its place.
The pain, though present, starts to wane,
A quiet calm begins its trace.

Yet when the night wraps 'round my mind,
And silence reigns beneath the moon,
Her name still whispers through the dark,
A bittersweet and fleeting tune.

Her memory lingers in the still,
A shadow soft, yet sharp and clear.
Though I’ve convinced myself I’ve healed,
She finds a way to reappear.

Time gently works to mend the scars,
And hope is something I’ve begun,
But even now, her ghost remains,
A chapter that I can’t outrun.

I regret loving you,
Regret giving you my life,
Regret making you my world.
Regret knowing you.

I regret doing things for you,
I regret writing you poems too.
I regret believing in all you’d do,
I regret everything about you.

No, you wouldn’t change a single bit,
Not your words nor actions fit.
The same old ways, the same old game,
Nothing about you ever changed.

I wasted my years thinking you’re "The One,"
A mistake I wish could be undone.
Oh, how I wish to turn back time,
So our paths would never align.

They say pain builds strength, but not for me,
It carved out doubts where hope should be.
Each scar, a whisper, each wound, a sigh,
It didn’t make me stronger, it made me ask why.

Why did love turn to fleeting sand,
Why did it crumble right from my hand?
The life I built, the years I gave,
Now feel like echoes in an empty cave.

Was it all real, or was it pretend?
A fragile story with a sudden end.
This pain doesn’t forge, it doesn’t renew,
It just leaves me asking, “What was true?”

And still, her shadow lingers near,
A haunting presence I’ll always fear.
No time can bury, no peace can hide,
The ghost of her that lives inside.

The world she longed for, she finally found,
A circle of care, where love abounds.
While I remain in this hollow space,
Alone with echoes I can't erase.

The roles we played have come undone,
She found her light, I lost my sun.
Where I was her rock, now I am air,
Invisible, forgotten, lost in despair.

Her laughter blooms with others near,
While I drown in memories I hold dear.
The life we shared feels so far away,
A shadow cast by brighter days.

Now she feels cared, now she feels free,
While loneliness wraps its arms around me.
Our paths diverged, her world expands,
But I’m left holding empty hands.

I gave her a haven, a place to belong,
A shield from the chaos, a place to grow strong.
I offered my heart, my time, my embrace,
Only to hear it was all out of place.

She says she felt pressured, confined in my care,
That my love was a burden too heavy to bear.
Regret, she whispers, for years spent with me,
A shadow cast over what I thought we could be.

I didn’t mean to make her feel so constrained,
I tried to bring comfort, not leave her pained.
Yet now, I’m the villain in her story’s refrain,
The one who brought heartache, the source of her strain.

But still, I wonder, was it all in vain?
The love that I gave, the joy, and the pain?
Though she may forget, I carry the cost,
Seven years of my love, now seen as lost.

My pen trembles with this final verse,
A love once blessing, now a curse.
With every word, I set you free,
This is my final act—no more of me.

No more whispers of what once was,
No more tracing love’s fragile flaws.
This chapter ends, the ink runs dry,
Goodbye, my love, this is goodbye.

She says I left her with scars unseen,
That I’m the reason for wounds unclean.
Funny, though, how swift she fled,
No warnings spoken, just words unsaid.

On the spot, my world collapsed,
Seven years erased, the bond unwrapped.
She claims her pain, yet here I stand,
Holding the shards with trembling hands.

Did I harm her? Did I not care?
Or is blame easier to bear?
While I drown in questions I can’t defy,
She moves ahead without a goodbye.

I know she's happy with someone else now
And I feel glad about it
At the same time, I feel conflicted
How did things turn out this way?

Please, let things be in my favor
Even for a while
Just for once in this life
Let me be free from you

She’s out there, living, laughing, free,
Connecting in ways I wish I could be.
She’s found her rhythm, both online and real,
While I remain with wounds I can’t heal.

I’m glad for her, truly I am,
Even though my heart feels a little slammed.
As an introvert, I find it tough,
But her joy is a reminder that life’s still enough.

She returned to the words she once confessed,
A life of fleeting crushes she likes best.
No ties to hold, no promises made,
I thought she’d grown, but she stayed the same shade.

I hoped for change, for love to endure,
But her heart chose freedom, wild and unsure.
I was a fool to believe she’d stay,
For some things never change, they just fade away.

She seems happier now than she was with me,
A brightness in her I never could see.
I never stopped her from spreading her wings,
I only asked for respect in small things.

Perhaps my love was too heavy to bear,
A weight she carried but couldn’t repair.
Now she’s free, and I’m left to reflect,
On what I gave and what she could accept.

You were never truly in love,
I was just a fleeting shove.
A phase to test, a trial to break,
A hurdle crossed for your own sake.

A burden you craved to set free,
A heart discarded so easily.
No matter the years, no matter the space,
The ache remains, I can't erase.

Even as we grow, worlds apart,
Your shadow lingers in my heart.
For you, I was nothing, just a place to stray,
But these feelings of mine won’t fade away.

We broke up 2 months ago
But you found someone you liked already
I still don't know what to feel
Am I that easy to replace?
Easy to forget?
Was all the years with me just a phase?
If you could do new things with people you just met,
Why can't you do it with me?
You just needed a reason
To break up with me.

She said it wasn’t about someone new,
Yet her actions betray what isn’t true.
Eager, so eager, to find what’s next,
To chase a spark, leaving me perplexed.

Whatever she says, it’s plain to see,
She’s not held back by memories of me.
Her heart has wandered, her gaze elsewhere,
I’m left in the shadows, gasping for air.

Pathetic, isn’t it, how fast she moved,
How little our years together proved.
While I’m here drowning in what we had,
She’s chasing new love, smiling, glad.

Go ahead.
Go like someone else.
Love someone new again.
After loving me,
You deserve someone worthy.
Did you really love me?
Because of how fast you find someone else?
Of how quick you are to forget,
That I was once with you,
I was once for you,
But not anymore,
clearly,
You like that person
much more.

She used me as the spark, the push to begin,
To try new things, to shed her old skin.
Yet why couldn't we rise and grow as one?
Why am I the shadow when her journey's begun?

Was I the weight that held her in place,
The tether that slowed her eager pace?
She blossomed beyond, while I stayed the same,
Left wondering if I’m the one to blame.

She never changed when we walked side by side,
But now she blooms with the world open wide.
Was I the barrier she needed to break?
A fleeting chapter, a step she’d forsake.

I was once fooled by you,
Your words, your promises
I handled it, said it was a thing of the past
I got through it

Then I got fooled again.
Twice.
By your words, your promises,
I let myself believe you.

I knew you weren't gonna change,
Not your past mistakes,
Not your past actions,
You're the same as you were,
Before.

Even after all those years
I got replaced
By someone
She just met

They gathered around her when I let go,
Her hopeless heart, saved by those she now knows.
Grateful, she smiles at the one who's near,
A friend of a year, erasing my years.

I see her turn to him, the boy I once feared,
Confessing his heart while I disappear.
Seven long years, now shadows in vain,
While he holds the space I can’t reclaim.

I was her anchor through storms and despair,
But my presence now vanishes, thin as the air.
Jealousy burns, yet I stand here alone,
Watching her heal in a world I don’t own.

Useless, the love I gave, now a ghost,
She found in another what I valued most.
Seven years wasted, or so it feels—
Replaced by a bond that suddenly heals.

How do I find someone new, like what you did?
How do I focus my feelings on other people, like you?
How do I forget us, as you find again someone new?
How do I throw away the past, like nothing happened?
How do I disregard my promises, like what you did?
How do I end it all?

It’s startling how fast they forget,
How swiftly their hearts reset.
Barely a pause, not even a sigh,
Before someone new catches their eye.

Was I so easy to leave behind?
All the years gone in the blink of time.
Their love replaced in a hurried stride,
While I’m still lost on the other side.

If love was real, wouldn’t it stay?
But they found another without delay.
And here I stand, watching them go,
Wondering if I ever mattered, though.