I. Letting Go
It wasn’t that we couldn’t.
It was that you let go
while I was still holding.
I learned to open my hand
so what didn’t want to stay
could fall.
Letting go
is also a form of love
when staying would mean lying.
II. Broken Commitment
I called home
what you called an option.
While I spoke of sacrifices,
you had already chosen
not to understand that word.
You didn’t just break a commitment:
you broke the place
where I was willing to stay.
III. Not a Priority
I was never the center.
Not even the edge.
I was the “later,”
the “we’ll see,”
the “not now.”
And still I loved you
like someone watering a land
that doesn’t belong to him.
IV. The Damage
You hurt me.
Not out of cruelty,
but out of indifference.
That hurts more.
Because it leaves no enemy,
only an absence
where faith once lived.
V. Love Without a Body
I loved you
without kissing your skin,
without touching your voice,
without inhabiting your days.
I loved you in silence,
in private promises,
in futures that never existed.
That was real too.
Even without proof.
VI. A Clear Conscience
I leave
with empty hands
and a clean chest.
I did what I could.
I said what I felt.
I waited just enough.
No guilt remains.
Only tiredness,
and a sad peace
that is honest.
VII. The Decision
I don’t stay where I’m not wanted.
I don’t insist where I’m not respected.
I open the door in front of me
and step out
without looking back.
Not because it doesn’t hurt,
but because staying
would hurt more.
VIII. Final Silence
Now I go silent.
Not to punish you,
but to save myself.
Silence
is not absence:
it is a boundary.
And here ends
what I was with you.
IX. The Door
I don’t close out of anger.
I close because I’ve reached
the end of myself with you.
This door makes no noise.
It doesn’t creak.
It asks for no witnesses.
I open it
like someone who understands
that not everything we love
is meant to stay.
Behind me I leave no resentment,
I leave who I was
when I still believed
that love was enough.
Ahead there are no promises,
only space.
And for the first time in a long while,
I breathe.
I don’t take you with me.
I take nothing of yours.
That too is respect.
I cross.
And the door stays there,
not to return,
but to remember
that I had the courage
to pass through.