Some days I tell myself
I should let you go completely.
No more checking your name in silence.
No more wondering if you still think about me
when the world gets quiet for you too.
But love doesn’t always leave
just because the situation hurts.
And that’s the part nobody talks about.
Because I could sit here
and tell myself all the logical things:
that inconsistency ruins people,
that uncertainty drains love,
that I deserve peace too.
And all of that would be true.
But somehow
so is this:
if you called me tonight,
my heart would still soften first.
That’s what scares me.
Not loving you—
loving you gently
after everything.
It’s been 300 days
since the universe let me meet you.
300 days
since my world meshed with yours.
300 days
since I’ve had the privilege
of learning you,
of existing beside you,
of loving someone who made life feel deeper than it did before.
And somehow
you still live inside my routines.
In the songs I replay.
In the pauses between thoughts.
In the version of tomorrow
I still accidentally build with you in it.
I wanted to celebrate you.
Not just on birthdays or holidays—
I mean genuinely celebrate you.
The way your mind works.
The way your presence calmed me.
The way loving you made life feel less mechanical
and more alive.
You made me want softness again.
Not games.
Not control.
Not ego.
Just closeness.
Consistency.
Safety.
I wanted to be the place
your shoulders finally relaxed.
I wanted to spend my days with you—
in whatever way life allowed us to exist.
Because even now,
I still believe it’s a privilege
to have known you.
A privilege to exist
in a space of you,
a space of us,
a space of what we were
and what we could’ve been.
But somewhere along the way
love started hurting more than healing.
And I think that’s what made it so difficult.
Because when I looked at you,
I never saw someone
I regretted loving.
I never saw someone
I could simply forget.
I saw someone I understood.
Someone I cared about.
Someone I still care about.
Someone I loved deeply.
Someone I probably always will—
in some quiet way.
Maybe that’s my sacrifice.
Accepting that I can love you
without forcing you to stay.
Accepting that I can still see
a future with you
without demanding one.
Because if I’m honest—
I still think about what we could be
if life ever met us
in the same place at the same time.
If our steps ever aligned again,
I wonder who we’d be.
I wonder where we’d go.
Not the version built from longing.
Not the version built from fear.
The healthy version.
The one where neither of us
has to abandon ourselves
to love the other.
The one where we feel safe enough
to tell the truth
and stay anyway.
The one where we stop fighting
for the possibility of us
and finally get to live it.
And maybe that day never comes.
Maybe our story
becomes something I carry
instead of something I continue.
But if life ever gave us
another chance to meet
as the people we’re still becoming—
I’d be lying if I said
I wouldn’t take it.
Because despite everything,
despite all the confusion,
all the distance,
all the moments that hurt—
I still see you.
And somehow,
after all this time,
I still see us.
But for the first time,
I know I’ll be okay
even if you don’t see me.
Slow Burn Poetry 