If love means letting go,
then why do my hands still ache
from holding on to ghosts?
Why does every memory
still feel alive beneath my skin,
like something breathing
inside a body already exhausted
from trying to survive it?
I love you more than anything.
More than words were ever built to carry.
More than silence can conceal.
More than you will ever truly know.
More than myself,
which may be the cruelest part of all.
Because somewhere along the way
I placed you above my own healing,
turned your absence into religion,
and prayed to the ruins of us
like broken things could still answer back.
I cannot loosen my grip
from what we were.
The hope still lingers
like smoke in a burned house,
clinging to walls long after the fire died.
The longing follows me everywhere.
In songs.
In sleepless hours.
In the spaces beside me
where I still instinctively make room for you.
And the desire to rebuild us,
to gather every shattered piece
with bleeding hands
and somehow make it whole again,
never truly leaves.
It only grows heavier.
Because deep down,
beneath every excuse I make for myself,
I know the truth:
you do not love me the way I love you.
Still, I walk this path anyway.
A road lined with old conversations,
false hope,
and wounds that reopen
every time I convince myself
that maybe this time
you will reach back for me too.
But you never do.
And maybe that is why the pain stays.
Not because love disappeared,
but because mine never learned
how to exist
without destroying me.