There is a devil in all of us
but you were never that to me
I saw no malice in you
only a quiet undoing
you could not name
a slow inward folding
long before it found a voice
you asked me once
softly
as if the question itself
had been wearing you down
“would you die for me”
and I answered
“what does that sacrifice mean
to someone who has not chosen
to live”
you called it love
the way you reached for me
but it was relief
a brief silence
in the weight you carried
into everything
I could feel it
in the way you held on
not to me
but to what I interrupted
you tried to find meaning in me
or in love itself
as if either
could make you whole
it does not hold
not for long
not when the fracture
is left untouched
what surrounds me
does not allow for survival
it asks
without raising its voice
without bending its terms
and in that asking
you began to come apart
not suddenly
but with precision
as if something unseen
was removing every place
you used to hide
you thought you would find in me
something to oppose
or something to lean into
but there was only a stillness
and it returned everything
back to you
and that was where you faltered
not because you were broken
not because you were wrong
but because you would not become
what was required
to remain
so I stepped away
not as abandonment
not as rejection
but because I could see
what it was doing to you
how even your care for me
was turning against you
how staying
would only deepen
what was already undoing you
and I would not take part
in something
that asked you
to break
I could not change your mind
only my place in it
so I chose absence
not abandonment
I let you persist
as far as your strength allowed
no further
than what you could endure
and in that
I let you remain
where meaning can be borrowed
and love can feel like enough
without ever having
to become it