Eight years—
not a season, not a phase,
but a whole architecture of belief.
We laid blueprints in whispered midnights,
picked out names for children
that never learned to breathe.
I built a future like a house with no exits,
every wall painted with you—
and when it cracked,
I stayed inside,
calling it weather.
You say I couldn’t see you,
couldn’t hold up the mirror you needed—
so you found your reflection
in someone else’s eyes.
Clean. Immediate.
Untouched by history.
And now I am here,
thirty,
standing in the wreckage of “forever,”
holding scraps that still say us
like they haven’t gotten the news.
The cruelest part isn’t that you left—
it’s that you lingered.
Three borrowed years
spent pretending the engine still ran
while I kept pouring myself into the tank.
I would have grieved five years ago.
I would have healed five years ago.
Instead, I learned how to survive
on hope stretched too thin to breathe.
You walked into your next life
like a door was always open.
I’m still learning how to close this one.
But listen—
even ruins remember how they stood.
Even broken ground
can grow something that doesn’t hurt.
And I am not “nothing.”
I am what remains
after loving someone completely
and still being left behind.
That has to count for something.
Apr 10
Apr 10, 2026 at 5:02 PM UTC
Eight years—
not a season, not a phase,
but a whole architecture of belief.
We laid blueprints in whispered midnights,
picked out names for children
that never learned to breathe.
I built a future like a house with no exits,
every wall painted with you—
and when it cracked,
I stayed inside,
calling it weather.
You say I couldn’t see you,
couldn’t hold up the mirror you needed—
so you found your reflection
in someone else’s eyes.
Clean. Immediate.
Untouched by history.
And now I am here,
thirty,
standing in the wreckage of “forever,”
holding scraps that still say us
like they haven’t gotten the news.
The cruelest part isn’t that you left—
it’s that you lingered.
Three borrowed years
spent pretending the engine still ran
while I kept pouring myself into the tank.
I would have grieved five years ago.
I would have healed five years ago.
Instead, I learned how to survive
on hope stretched too thin to breathe.
You walked into your next life
like a door was always open.
I’m still learning how to close this one.
But listen—
even ruins remember how they stood.
Even broken ground
can grow something that doesn’t hurt.
And I am not “nothing.”
I am what remains
after loving someone completely
and still being left behind.
That has to count for something.