cruelest truth of all.
i told you you were the love of my life,
and i said it like a prayer i didn’t mean to keep.
my hands shook when you reached for me,
my lungs clenched when you asked for forever.
i wanted to love you—truly—but my heart
was a house with collapsing walls,
unfamiliar with how to hold someone steady
without letting the roof fall in.
i left before the light could settle in,
before your arms could become home.
i left and carried pieces of you with me
like fragile figurine i wasn’t brave enough to place
on a shelf that wouldn’t crack.
every glance you gave me felt like a tide pulling in,
and i flinched,
pulled back,
and left marks on your sand
that the next wave would erase.
you told me i ripped your heart,
and i wore that like a wound i couldn’t stitch.
trying to hold me in,
but i was fire and smoke and fear
all tangled up in one body
that didn’t know how to stay
so i flew.
and now i watch you move through someone else’s hands,
laugh in someone else’s shine,
and i feel the hollow in my chest
where i could have been the sunlight you deserved
instead of the midnight rain i was.
i was not cruel.
i was terrified.
i loved in fragments,
and the whole of you
was too much for my trembling fingers.
i carried regret like a shadow that never left,
the memory of your tan skin, your smile,
your patient, perfect self—
the person i could never love the way he needed.
and i keep asking myself
how i could have been both
the reason you bled
and the reason you survived,
all at once.
i was the love you lost
and the love i couldn’t become,
and maybe that is the cruelest truth of all.
