You called it love like it was something
you could hold together with steady hands,
like if you braced the cracks just right
the whole thing wouldn’t collapse.
You fought quietly,
in patience, in forgiveness,
in the way you swallowed your pride
just to keep her from slipping further away.
Every word you chose was careful,
every silence, deliberate,
a man building bridges
over a river that kept widening.
But she was fighting too.
Just not for you,
never for you.
She was searching for exits
in every conversation,
turning your apologies into evidence,
your effort into exhaustion.
Where you saw something worth saving,
she saw something already gone.
And maybe that was the cruelest part,
not the arguments,
not the distance,
but the way your battles never met.
You were trying to hold on,
while she was learning how to let go.
And how do you win that?
How do you outfight someone
who’s already decided
they don’t want the victory?
So you lost,
not because you weren’t strong enough,
not because you didn’t love hard enough,
but because love isn’t a war
you can win alone.