When I leave,
then I leave you too.
Not because the love disappeared,
not because the memories stopped clawing at my ribs,
but because forgetting you
is not something I was ever built to do.
You remain in everything.
The silence after songs end,
The empty passenger seats,
The habits I still carry,
All like fingerprints that refuse to fade.
But holding on
has become its own kind of drowning.
A slow descent beneath waves
made from hope, longing, and what-ifs.
I cannot keep reaching for a hand
that no longer reaches back.
So when I leave,
I must leave completely.
I must walk far enough away
to hear my own thoughts again.
To learn who I am
without orbiting your gravity.
To build a life that feels like mine,
not one haunted by the shape of us.
Maybe happiness is not waiting for me,
but I have to try to find it anyway.
Because loving you
has cost me pieces of myself
I can no longer afford to lose.
And though my heart will still whisper your name
in quiet moments,
I know staying would only keep us both
trapped inside a story
that has already ended.
So when I leave,
I leave with love still in my chest,
with grief in my hands,
and with the smallest hope
that somewhere beyond this pain
there is still a version of me
capable of feeling whole again.