Would You Die For Me

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