A Candle Snuffed By Your Absence

I tell myself the truth
the way it finally settled,
after the fractures made a home in me,
after doubt learned how to speak clearly.

If I open my eyes just right,
we are exactly what we became,
a promise undone,
a future reassigned.

And I cannot go back.
God, I cannot go back.

Because I remember everything
you hoped I’d soften,
every silence that wasn’t peace,
every crack I tried to rename.

I will not swallow what broke me
and call it love again.

You chose a life without me in it
before I ever let you go.
You rewrote “forever”
while I was still reading it out loud.

And yes,
loving you felt like certainty once,
but now I see it for what it was:
a story I refused to stop telling.

I know what I saw.
I know what you did.
And I will not reshape truth
just to fit your absence into something gentle.

Because going back means
forgetting myself.
Means standing in the same fire
and calling it warmth.

So I will let it burn correctly this time.

Even if I still hear the echo:

“This is love.
This is enough.
This is worth it.”