We stood in the temple,
where the air was thick with smoke and silence,
where grief braided itself into the wood,
and every nail hammered was a prayer.
I pressed my palm against the wall—
felt it throb like a second heartbeat.
The desert had taught me
that even sand remembers
the weight of footsteps long gone.
I came here with you,
not to hold on,
but to learn the courage of letting go.
Love—
our love—
was a fire that refused to go out.
It burned in the bones of every dance floor we crushed,
in the galaxies we mapped on each other’s skin,
in the laughter that refused to sleep,
even when dawn was begging us to.
But even twin flames
sometimes learn
that too much fire
can leave the house we built in ashes.
So we stood there,
in the temple,
our hands heavy with memory,
our hearts heavier still.
I thought of the nights
we crowned ourselves king and queen of the cosmos,
how we spun the world into music,
and how the music never once asked us
to stay the same.
The truth is—
I could love you forever
and still set you free.
Because love is not a cage;
it’s a doorway.
And sometimes the most radical devotion
is the opening of the door,
the whispered blessing as the other one walks through.
I didn’t burn anger here.
I burned the maps of resentment,
the suitcases of should-have-beens.
I burned the ache that said
I had to grip tighter or lose everything.
And in the rising smoke,
I saw our story—
not ending,
but shape-shifting,
like the desert wind.
This was not goodbye.
This was gratitude carved in flame.
This was the altar of all we survived,
the cathedral of everything we dared to feel.
And as the temple burned,
I knew—
we are not lost.
We are a constellation.
We are the echo of joy in every bone of this desert.
We are the proof
that even in the letting go,
love remains.