I stared at the wound as it stayed open Gave up hope that it would ever close Stood up, sighed Walked away feeling resigned To accept the pain as a part of me Not wanting it anymore and yet not regretting it Simply wishing it did not hurt And would not become infected As it lay exposed, bare before the world
As I kept walking, life fell in Swept me away in a way love never could Yet love was a part of the whole Life grew larger The world grew smaller Memories grew in number While friendships grew in meaning And as what I knew grew exponentially, Our time together grew more blurry Our separation I understood more As I thought about it less
What I thought were stones of foundation Turned out to be forming just the windows Set aside for now, one day to be dusted off and placed in the house that is my life Shedding light on parts of myself I discovered through loving and leaving you
I find myself conquering the greatest fear I had when we parted, That I would one day look back and call it young love, Robbing it of what it truly was to meβreal love, deep love, lasting. It would be untrue, unjust to minimize it To reduce it to a cliche, to call it a coming of age I feared I would try to disguise it to somehow lessen the pain I didn't realize the possibility that our love may become smaller Not from my efforts to minimize it, But because I would grow around it
I underestimated God I underestimated myself I'm not going back and changing the story to make it go down sweeter Saying now that you didn't really know me then to make it feel a little neater You did know me I did love you Our love was not small in the world we shared It was the greatest love I had known And now, now I no longer live in that world Our love did not shrink I have grown