Poetry Analysis

All the Words I Never Got to Say “We’re too young to love, too old to cry.” Poem one: What it's like to be alone in a big city Poem Two: Not everyone gets a happy ending Poem three: A good life makes bad stories Poem four: Unreturned love Bonus poem: In my restless dreams What is it like to be alone in a big city As Autumn Changes to Winter The season changes gently, but it hits hard, the city breathes slowly, getting ready for the winner. Autumn drops colors like secrets spilling, and Winter comes in, gathering every leftover sparkle. Change seems gentle until it cuts deeply, leaves fall quietly — but they fall like dreams. Cold fronts and old habits — same routines, both arrive uninvited, both fall apart. I stand on the balcony, the skyline humming low, streetlights buzzing like they know what I know: every warm person leaves when the cold shows, and every friend disappears when the wind blows. Autumn fades… but it fades like a warning, all golden insides spilled on the pavement, mourning. Winter isn't colder — it's just more honest, because warmth lies easily, but the frost? It's the only thing perfect. I learned that weather and people share traits — both pull back, both shift weight, both promise to stay then move away, both teach you how to stand when everything else breaks. So yes, Autumn fades to Winter — but listen closely: there's a rhythm in the loss, a pulse inside the shiver, a truth that hits faster: what leaves in the fall comes back colder in the winter… and what leaves you warm returns as a stranger. Chapter Two — I Could Never Be Alone / The Day You Left I told you I could never be alone — but what I meant was: I could never be alone with myself. You misunderstood it as romance, but it was really a warning in disguise, a confession dressed up as a compliment. The day you left, the city didn't dim — I did. Streetlights kept shining like nothing was missing, but every bulb flickered in my chest like it was learning how to live without warmth. You walked away softly, like a metaphor leaving its meaning, like the moon slipping off the tide but still pulling the ocean with her. I swear the sidewalk shifted when you did, cracked like my habits, split like my patterns, reacted like my body did whenever I reached for someone who felt like home and held them like proof I wasn't haunted. I told myself attachment was love — but that was the lie I inherited, passed down like old jewelry: beautiful, heavy, and never really mine. You were my mythology — I read you like scripture, memorized your storms, trusted your lightning even when it hit me first. I should've known gods don't make house calls, but I kept building altars out of all the ways you looked at me. The day you left, I realized I loved you the same way I feared you'd leave: desperately, recklessly, with both hands shaking like I was holding onto something already falling. You were my shelter and my siren — safety and warning in the same breath, a parallel no one should have to translate. Sometimes love isn't a bond — it's a bandage that forgets it's temporary, a fix that turns into a dependence, a comfort that becomes a condition. And me? I kept calling it connection because calling it clutching would've sounded too true. I could never be alone — and the day you left proved it. Not because I lost you, but because I found the silence… and it echoed like a truth I'd been running from since childhood. Chapter Three — My Little Winter / Died Like a Dream My little winter — I called you that because you felt pure, but also because you were the coldest thing I ever let melt in my hands. Funny, right? How innocence frostbites you before corruption ever gets the chance. You walked in softly, like snowfall on a rooftop — quiet, pale, untouched. But everything looks holy when it's distant, and everything turns dangerous when it decides to thaw. I used to swear you were untouched, but darling, you were untouched like a crime scene before the cops arrive — all bright tape and bad omens, no footprints yet, but a whole storm waiting in the drywall. Purity looked good on you because I didn't know where you hid the stains. Irony's a hell of a mirror — I thought you were clean until I saw my reflection smeared across you like guilt. They say winter kills flowers, but you bloomed in the frost, grew roots in the cold, learned to feed on the warmth you stole. That was the parallel that gutted me— how something so white could learn to live off taking red. You were my little winter because I romanticized you — snow globe girl, soft-glow girl, break-if-I-breathe-on-you girl. But you weren't fragile, you were fractal: beautiful from afar, sharp when held wrong. You died like a dream — the kind that feels sacred until you wake up sweating, wondering why your chest aches and your hands feel empty. The kind you try to go back to even knowing it'll hurt. I thought you were my innocence returning, but you were my corruption learning a new language, one spelled in frostbite kisses and sugar-coated sins. Saint turned symbol, symbol turned warning, warning turned woman. You were winter, sure — but not the peaceful kind. You were the kind that buries towns, collapses roofs, looks soft from a distance but kills slow and quiet and beautifully. And me? I kept calling it purity because calling it poison would've made me admit I drank it willingly. My little winter — you died like a dream, and lived like a lesson. Chapter Four — Forget About Me in the Next Life, For I Am Gone and Alone Forget about me in the next life — or maybe this one, too, I'm the echo of a swing set that creaked too loud, the shadow in the closet that called my name before I even knew fear. Childhood trauma taught me how to fold, how to hide like coins lost in couch cushions, how to make small disappearances into the hollow of someone else's eyes. Adulthood trauma— built on those same marbles, every step a hazard, every touch a question I didn't have the answers for. I am the empty swing, pumping back and forth, never leaving the playground, never leaving myself. I am the train in the tunnel, lights off, barreling forward into the walls I swore I left behind. Parallels like spiderwebs hang across my life— hands that hit then, hands that withhold now. The laughter that meant love, the love that tastes like warning when I reach for it anyway. I am the candle in a hurricane, flicker bending, burning, bending, I am the river I never learned to swim, but it drags me anyway. I am glass under skin, fractured like windows after storms my parents never named. Every scar, a lesson I didn't ask for, every season, a rhythm of the same song— the child screaming into silence, the adult screaming into shadows that whisper, “you never learned to stay whole.” Forget about me in the next life— or this one I stumble through anyway. I am gone, and yet I walk the streets, shadowing myself, carrying the debris of unhealed stories that echo louder than the city ever could. Chapter Five — Forgetting About Me Forgetting about me isn't a clean cut — it's a slow fade, like dusk swallowing a streetlamp, like the last note of a song you never finished learning. Growth tried to show me how to walk forward, healing whispered, don't leave pieces behind, and I laughed because I didn't know which to follow. I wore both like shoes that never fit, walking through alleys lined with my old mistakes, where lessons perched like pigeons on fire escapes, wings slick with memory. I tripped over old stories, Alice in Wonderland style, down rabbit holes of my own undoing, and every reflection I passed smiled back a stranger I used to love. Healing without growth feels like patching a tire while it spins, growth without healing is a tower built on sand. I did both, neither, all at once — walking the city's veins with a heartbeat I couldn't call my own. Sometimes I thought progress was learning to close the door quietly, other times it was smashing it open just to see if it still mattered. I'm carrying the echoes of old chapters, like Gatsby staring at green lights, like Hamlet watching shadows flicker on stone walls, like Jane Doe left unclaimed in a drawer while I scribbled my own apologies across the margins. Forgetting about me is a book burning in slow motion, every page a lesson, every smoke curl a memory, and yet I step forward anyway, footprints fading, overlapping, tracing the same streets my younger self haunted. I outgrow, I relapse, I rebuild — sometimes the heart grows faster than the mind and sometimes the mind outruns the body. I keep walking past the cracks in the pavement, past the neon reflections that taught me to see and past the windows I smashed to watch my own reflection break. Forgetting about me isn't leaving, it's learning the distance between who I was and who I can't stop becoming. It's carrying scars like medals and realizing some wounds teach you more than some loves ever could. And in the end, I am both the lesson and the student, the echo and the silence, the hand that lets go and the hand that still reaches. Chapter Six — I'm Not Easy on Myself I'm not easy on myself— I spin through these halls of mirrors, every reflection a whisper, every shadow a sermon. Doubt drips like melted streetlamps onto the pavement of my chest, I walk barefoot on glass and call it confession. I map my scars like constellations, black stars stitched into the sky of my ribcage, guiding me back to failures I didn't even need to find. Triumph hums a requiem, every misstep writes my obituary in invisible ink that only I can read. I sabotage like a clockmaker with a vendetta against time, rebuilding broken hands into monuments, thinking pain is pedagogy and grief is a degree I've earned. I am the echo in subway tunnels, the puddle footprints following me in neon, the corner-shadow of my own eye murmuring, “You'll never be enough.” I critique like a thief, stealing from myself then auctioning the pieces to the museum of my shame. Parallels everywhere— the child hiding under beds, the adult hiding in plain sight. I beg for love but panic when it lands, swear I'm fine while spinning each night like a scratched vinyl looped through alleyways of my mind. Doubt crowns me like thorns, self-hate inks my epitaph in letters that won't dry. Every heartbeat a metronome counting sins I never committed, every impulse a fuse set to blow before I reach the light. I whisper riddles to myself, but the punchline tastes bitter. Pull close, push away, burn bridges mid-sentence I call confession, turn warmth into crime scenes. I am storm and the house it wrecks, candle and hurricane, thief and lock. The city hums, lights flicker, but the manuscript of my life is written in margins that only I misread. I'm not easy on myself, maybe that's the point— walls I built aren't shields, they're labyrinths trapping the only prisoner who never learned escape: me. CHAPTER VII — Alone in the Blue Hour / A Calm Mind Isn't For Me Blue hour bleeds down the skyline, a blade held sideways— cutting light from dark, hope from habit, me from myself. The city hums like a hospital hallway, that long low drone that sounds like living only because dying is quieter. I walk through it hollow, like my chest is a boarded-up storefront with “come back soon” painted on the glass— but even I know I'm lying. You're still somewhere in this city, but far enough that your footsteps feel like fiction. And I hate that your absence echoes louder than my pulse— hate that my darkest hours still shape themselves around your silhouette, like grief learning your handwriting. This city is cruel in the ways I am. The bridges look like final choices, the rooftops like invitations, the alleys whisper my name with the same softness you used to— except their tenderness feels like permission. I drown in the streetlights sometimes. They flicker like the thoughts I try to smother: jump / breathe / jump / breathe a metronome of maybe-nots drumming under my skin. And the whole time, the skyline leans in with a smirk, as if it knows I'm running out of reasons to keep stitching this body together. My depression isn't poetic— it's a cracked mirror that only reflects the worst angles. It's waking up wondering why I bothered. It's carrying a ghost around that looks a lot like the boy I used to be before the world pulled the light out of my teeth. And you— you were the last streetlight that didn't flicker. The warm glow on a freezing block, the soft “stay” in a city built to swallow me whole. But even your love wasn't strong enough to stop the river from rising under my ribs. Now every sidewalk feels like a sentence. Every bus window shows me vanishing in slow motion. Every tower leans as if bending down to ask why I'm still here. Some nights, I swear the wind calls back to me in your voice— soft, brittle, breaking— saying things you never said, like “come home,” or worse, “you won't be missed.” And I hate how believable that sounds when the city nods along, like it's been waiting for the weight of me to stop pretending it belongs here. My thoughts fold sharp. My mind grows quiet in the dangerous way— the way that feels like peace but means surrender. The way a candle feels calmest right before it dies. I tell myself I'm just tired, but tired doesn't feel this permanent. Tired doesn't stare at the river and imagine the water spelling my name. A calm mind isn't for me— I am built from storms, from sirens, from swallowed screams. But even here, in the bruise-colored hour between staying and slipping, I wonder if the city mourns me already— or if it waits for the quiet click of a story ending mid‑page. And I walk on, barely, because the night hasn't decided whether I'm a survivor or a ghost rehearsing. CHAPTER VIII — How It Feels to Be Alone in a Big City I used to think the city hated me. Now I know — it only echoed what I whispered first. Every streetlight blinked like a warning, every crosswalk clicked like a countdown, every window stared back with the same quiet accusation: You don't belong here. But here's the paradox: the farther I walked from people, the closer I came to myself. The more crowded the sidewalks got, the more I found room to breathe. Loneliness became a language, and the city — the city became fluent. I learned that silence isn't empty. It's full of things I ran from. And crowds aren't company. They're just mirrors with heartbeats. I once held love like a lifeline, gripped it so tight the rope burned through. I thought being with someone would stop me from drowning. But drowning with a hand in mine felt the same as drowning alone — just wetter with disappointment. And still, still I chased shadows shaped like people, still I mistook noise for warmth, still I confused attention with affection, still I tried to fill a hole with anyone who didn't flinch when they looked into it. Anaphora: I ran from myself, I begged for myself, I broke for myself, I buried myself — all in the name of being “not alone.” Irony? I never felt lonelier than when someone called me theirs. Hyperbole? Maybe. But some truths are too big to speak plain. Litotes? I wasn't not hurting — I was a cathedral of cracked glass, a stained window praying for someone else's light. Synecdoche? Every part of me was a piece of the city — my chest the subway tunnels, my ribs the rusted bridges, my pulse the sirens fading down 9th. I wasn't living in the city. I was living as it. And the city kept shifting. And so did I. I saw parallels everywhere — buildings leaning like tired men, alleys holding secrets like old lovers, windows watching like disappointed parents. Every block was an echo of some earlier chapter I swore I’d outgrown. Fear of abandonment in the skyscrapers that stand alone on purpose. Dangerous love in the neon lights that burn you just for reaching. Childhood trauma in the fire escapes designed only for running. Self-hate in the train station glass that warps even clean reflections. Depression in the midnight trains that don’t stop unless you make them. But grief changes shape. Even shadows need rest. At some point — quietly, softly, accidentally — I stopped begging the city to hold me. And started holding it back. That was acceptance. Not fireworks. Not enlightenment. Just a tired exhale that didn’t hurt to release. And suddenly the city lit up. Not because its lights changed, but because mine did. Not because it loved me, but because I didn’t need it to. Not because I was finally found, but because I stopped disappearing. I realized: You can be surrounded and still solitary. You can be solitary and still safe. You can be safe and still searching. And searching doesn’t mean lost. Isolation wasn’t abandonment. It was a room with better acoustics. It let me hear myself. Hear my heartbeat. Hear the things I never let surface when I was too busy auditioning for love. And now — now the city breathes with me. I see life in the corners I once avoided, see warmth in the spaces I feared, see versions of me I thought died sitting under streetlights smiling like old friends. I walk the same streets with a different spine. I stand in the same silence with a steady pulse. I face the same skyline without feeling the urge to jump through it. The city hasn’t changed. But I have. And that’s enough to make this place feel holy. How it feels to be alone in a big city? Like finally meeting the echo you spent years running from and realizing it was you — and you were never empty, just unheard. Like understanding loneliness is not the absence of people, but the presence of yourself for the very first time. Like knowing that isolation isn’t exile — it’s evolution. And for the first time, the city isn’t a tomb. It’s a pulse. A promise. A place I can stand in without disappearing. For the first time, I am alone — and not lonely. For the first time, I am here. And the city finally feels full.

VOICEMAIL — “The Smaltism” Beep. Yo… damn. I don’t think I ever really stopped to say this out loud before, but— I’m a masterpiece. Like actually. I’ve grown so much this year it’s insane. I express my emotions better than half the adults I know. I took my feelings and turned them into art—season after season, pain after pain. My love became wounds, my mind became a city, my trauma became architecture. And somehow all of it still shaped… me. Imperfect, messy, stubborn, dramatic me. Adonis. And as 2025 wraps up, man, I finally learned to respect myself. ’Cause if I don’t, how the hell am I expecting anybody else to? I also learned that hell isn’t the biblical fire and brimstone—nah. Hell is an English classroom with Ms. Mooney and an emotionally immature light‑skinned demon you gotta see every other day. That is the place that drains you dry. That’s the place that makes you wonder if you’re crazy… makes you question why you didn’t just swim into a sock all those years ago. And somehow, in the middle of all that, you zone out for one day and write an eight‑paragraph poem about your whole damn life—every mistake, every truth, every trauma you tried to carry alone. So here’s the message. My little end‑of‑year TED talk: Self‑reflection hits everyone differently. Sometimes it comes from a teacher that only has about three summers left in the tank, sometimes from a girl who got you 0–2—yes, SCOREBOARD, I am losing—who somehow keeps respawning in your storyline like an unwanted NPC. But reflection matters. It helps you grow. Helps you face the stuff you’ve been dodging. And yo—sometimes you are the problem in your own story. I know I was. Big time. But I’m learning. I’m changing. I’m getting better. And that’s enough. Anyway… this concludes my shady little TED talk. Call it “The Smaltism.” You wouldn’t get it—you’re not a band kid. Maybe one day I’ll let you in on the loop. End of message. Not Everyone Deserves a Good Ending Postscript (Voicemail Version) Voicemail — 0:00 “Ayo, Tonio…

Listen, bro… I’m not even gon’ lie to you — dating in our generation? Yeah, no. Don’t do it. One minute she want me, next minute she ‘need space,’ then suddenly we avoidant, emotionally unavailable, and somehow I’m the villain for caring too loud. And the crazy part? The SECOND I stop caring — the whole connection collapses like it was waiting for me to quit breathing so it could finally fall apart. I been sitting here thinking… all that time I poured into her? All that energy, all those late nights? Man, I could’ve written a whole novel. A fire one too. But it’s whatever. Look — I really do hope whoever she chose over me makes her happy… Better than I could? Probably not. ’Cause be for real — ain’t nobody putting up with the BS she put me through and still loving. I’m a G for that alone. But bro… you know that saying, ‘another man’s trash is another man’s treasure’? Yeah… calling her trash is wild — that’s low. But so is not communicating. So… balance, I guess. Here’s what I learned, Tonio: I can communicate perfectly — clear, mature, articulate, straight-up Donni style — but it don’t matter. If the person listening ain’t emotionally old enough to actually comprehend it, then the communication ain’t communication. It’s wasted breath. A monologue with an audience of zero. If they can’t understand you, you weren’t talking — you were echoing in a room that was already empty. …Anyway. That’s my TED Talk. Don’t do drugs. And stop dating light skins with names that start with M. I’m 0–2 on that demographic alone. I’m retiring. I’m done. Voicemail — 1:42 Bro… all I’m gonna say is: I told you so. And you sound PRESSSED right now. Also… SCOREBOARD, SCOREBOARD—” Voicemail — 1:55 “Did you really just reference Family Guy?? Man, ask your girl how she feel about you—” Voicemail — 2:03 “She said she wanna just be friends… after a YEAR of me chasing.” Voicemail — 2:06 “…Damn. At least I got the girl. SCOREBOARD! SCOREBOARD!” Voicemail ends

CHAPTER ONE — Did We Waste Our Time We fell in patterns — spirals disguised as promises, seasons masquerading as second chances. You called it “timing,” but time was the only thing we never got right. We were clocks with cracked glass, ticking toward each other while running from ourselves. I loved you in loops — you loved me in pauses. Your yes came tied to a maybe, your maybe came sewn to escape. You touched me like a bookmark in a story you were scared to finish, left me open on the page but never read the ending aloud. I kept thinking if I loved harder, you’d stay longer — as if devotion was some spell that could anchor a girl who only knew how to drift. I mistook your trembles for tenderness, your distance for depth, your fear for feeling. A fatal misread — I guess I was fluent in you but illiterate in your intentions. You were all desire on the surface, all nerves underneath. A contradiction carved in mascara, a heartbeat hiding behind habit. You held me like a secret sin, kissed me like confession, but ran from me like I was the proof. We were parallels pretending to meet — asymptotes with ambition. I leapt; you lingered. I stayed; you stalled. Your love was always almost, mine was always already. Unmatched. Uneven. A duet where only one of us knew the melody. I waited for you — God, I waited for you — like patience could purchase permanence. Like holding the door might convince someone they were meant to enter. But you feared the threshold more than the leaving. Fear was your compass, desire just your detour. You loved me, I know you did — but love in your hands was a trembling creature, an animal startled by its own shadow. And every time things got heavy, you mistook weight for danger, mistook safety for restraint, mistook my offering for a warning. I kept thinking time would mature us, but you kept maturing reasons to run. Your heart was a house half-built, and I kept trying to live inside it like the roof wasn’t leaking. So did we waste our time? Or did time waste us — stretch us thin trying to fit a future something fragile as fear couldn’t carry? Maybe the tragedy wasn’t that you left — but that you loved me just enough to stay haunted, never enough to stay home. And the cruelest part? I would’ve given you forever, and you were terrified of giving me the next minute. CHAPTER TWO — I’d Rather Be Alone I wanted to love you like a map loves a river, but you were the delta that refused direction. I poured devotion into your currents, but you ran toward every tributary except the one that led to me. You were chaos with a heart-shaped label, avoidant by habit, anxious by accident. I traced your patterns like constellations, hoping the lines would connect, but every star you held was flickering or falling. I tried patience like a skill, but your absence made it gravity. I chased your presence, but presence in your world was never mine to hold. I wanted to stay. You wanted to leave. The space between us was a canyon I could feel in my chest. Every touch you offered was wrapped in hesitation, every word a cipher, every glance a gate locked before I could enter. I loved the idea of you, the fragments I could gather, but love cannot thrive on shards and whispers alone. I wanted to meet you halfway, but you folded the distance like origami, each crease a refusal I could neither smooth nor ignore. You were the ghost of safety, haunting my arms while I begged for warmth. I learned the truth slowly, like the tide tracing a coastline it could never claim: I could not keep you whole, and in trying, I fractured myself. Better to be alone than to be the architect of my own decay. So I leave spaces open for myself, rooms without your shadow, nights without your half-lit return. I choose the echo of my own pulse over the storm you bring. Because love is not survival when survival requires surrender. You wanted to love on your terms, I wanted to love with mine, and the middle was a desert with no oasis in sight. We were mirrors reflecting halves that could never meet without shattering. I’d rather be alone, than love you in pieces, than carry your fear and call it intimacy. I’d rather stand in empty streets, hear only my own heartbeat, than chase a presence that leaves me absent, even when I’m next to you. And maybe one day you’ll learn to stay, but I will have learned that some currents are too wild to follow, some rivers too unsteady to navigate. Some people are storms and some of us are not made to drown. I choose myself. I choose my pulse. I choose the silence that keeps me whole. I choose alone — because some love is too heavy to carry and some hearts are too elusive to hold. CHAPTER THREE — Will I Be Missed? Maybe In Another Lifetime I left the street we built together, its corners still smelling of us — but the walls were yours, and your walls were too sharp for my skin. I walked away with my pulse in my hands, my hands raw from holding what should have been fire but burned anyway. Leaving felt like betrayal, like folding a page you weren’t ready to close. Even when leaving was right, even when it was necessary, my ego asked: will I be missed? Did I matter? Or am I just a shadow passing through someone else’s life, like a ghost rehearsing a scene they’ll never be in again? I replayed our laughter like film reels, but every frame bled into the next: your smile, my mistake, the nights I stayed too long, and the nights I left too soon. Cause and effect tangled like smoke, and the smoke circled me, asking questions I didn’t want to answer: Did love ever bloom here, or just survive on fear? I moved on, but moving on is a crooked mirror. It reflects the self you thought you were, the self you wished to be, and the self who still feels the tug of someone you left behind. Sometimes the stages aren’t stages — just loops, spirals, repetitions. I called it progress, but progress whispered: maybe you’re still too close. Trauma leaves fingerprints on your chest, tracing patterns of what you endured so that even freedom feels weighted. You survive, but your heart remembers the chains you didn’t realize were shackles until they were gone. Love can hurt, but leaving can hurt harder, because love is visible, and absence is invisible but still bruises. I wondered if you’d remember me like the city remembers snow: soft at first, then gone, but leaving a chill in the corners of streets no one walks. Maybe in another lifetime, we’d navigate the currents differently. Maybe in another life, I’d stay, or you’d stay, and fear would learn to bend, and chaos would finally fold into pattern. But this life— this life has rules I can’t rewrite. Some love is lessons, some love is scars, and some love is proof that leaving is survival. I carry the echoes anyway. I replay the “what ifs” like vinyl cracked and skipping, wondering if you ever loved me fully or only the idea of me that fit neatly in your absence. And sometimes I still care — still ache — not for the life I had, but for the version of myself that loved you enough to stay. The city hums around me, streets as silent as my questions, windows as reflective as my doubts. I walk past shadows I used to inhabit, past corners that remember me like a ghost, and I wonder: will I be missed? Or is that ego just another shadow, asking the wrong question at the wrong time? And maybe, maybe, in another lifetime, we’ll find the courage to match what we once only wanted. But in this one, I fold my pulse back into my hands, walk away from the fire, and let the echoes answer their own questions. CHAPTER FOUR — When I Close My Eyes, Will You Still Be There? You came back like a rumor that never learned silence, a shadow retracing old steps as if the ghost of us still paid rent in my ribs. You said you missed me — but your voice cracked like a door that only opens when it’s closing. And I wondered, when I close my eyes, will you still be there? I remembered our cycle — the way your love came in tides that only reached for me when the moon was wrong. The way mine stayed, shore-fast, steady, salt-stung and waiting. You called it timing; I called it erosion. Still, the question pulsed: When I close my eyes, will you still be there? You held your fear like a sword, pressed to my throat whenever I stepped too close to the truth of you. I held my heart like a gift I kept giving you long after you stopped unwrapping it. We were a paradox: you, the flight; me, the anchor. Both of us drowning the other. And yet I asked, When I close my eyes, will you still be there? Every memory flickered — Chapter One’s endless cycle, where loving you felt like running laps in a maze you’d already memorized the exits of. Chapter Two’s undoing, my anxious hands reaching for your avoidant pulse, a rhythm that quickened only when I let go. Chapter Three’s mourning, the ache of leaving you for me, wondering if you’d miss my absence more than you ever loved my presence. And now — you stood before me again, like fate knocking on a door I’d just locked. I felt like the Giving Tree after the last branch was torn off — all stump, no shelter, just a shape that once meant something. You wanted shade in a forest you burned down. You wanted fruit from roots you starved. And still, the question cut through me: When I close my eyes, will you still be there? You spoke about “another chance,” as if love were a test we both failed in different ways. You said you’d changed — but your voice shook like borrowed truth, your eyes flinching from mine like they always did when the real parts of us got loud. Avoidants return the way comets do — bright, brief, burning, leaving the sky darker after. And I knew if I let you in, you’d run the moment love asked you to stay. You’d hold me only long enough to remember why you feared holding at all. You’d kiss me only deep enough to make leaving hurt again. You’d give just enough truth to keep me chasing and take just enough silence to keep me doubting. And the question echoed harder: When I close my eyes, will you still be there? Maybe closing my eyes is the only way to see clearly. Maybe disappearance is the only version of us that won’t scar again. Maybe your return is just another exit rehearsed backward. Maybe you loved the chase, not the arrival — the idea of being wanted, not the work of wanting back. I thought of what I had left: the stump of me, still warm from the fire, still reaching for sunlight I forgot was mine. I thought of how long I bent, how long I waited, how long I mistook surviving you for loving you. And when you stepped closer, eyes soft with your old, familiar storm, I finally answered without answering: “I can’t give you anything else without losing everything I’ve got left.” I didn’t ask you to stay. I didn’t ask you to go. I just let the moment breathe, and let the silence choose for us. But inside me, the chorus rose again, this time softer, this time mine: When I close my eyes, will you still be there? When I close my eyes, will you still be there? When I close my eyes… will you still— And the world never said yes. And the world never said no. And maybe that’s the answer I needed. CHAPTER FIVE — Not Everyone Deserves a Good Ending I closed my eyes the way I used to as a kid when monsters stood too close to the bed — soft shut, tight shut, as if darkness could protect me from what stood in the light. And when I opened my mouth, the truth spilled out like medicine I never wanted to swallow: “I love you. God, I really do. But I can’t love you anymore.” The words trembled, a match burning down to my fingers. You always had this way of turning my pulse to kindling. And I remembered — how the first time you broke me felt like bad luck. But the second time? That was choreography. That was pattern. That was you choosing the exit before we even entered. You took me to my lowest lows twice — and I’m still climbing from the first fall, fingers bleeding on rocks that remember your name too well. You left me sleepless, food tasting like cardboard, days stitched together with dread, my body forgetting how to hunger for anything except a version of you that never existed. I whispered it again, to the silence between us, to the ghost you kept sending in your place: “I can’t do this anymore.” And maybe that was the answer to the question I kept asking — When I close my eyes, will you still be there? Because tonight, when my lashes met, you dissolved like sugar in rain, sweet for a moment before disappearing into something I can’t taste anymore. The truth is not everyone deserves a good ending. Not every love story needs a resolve. Some hearts are better left unfinished, unhealed, unopened like letters with dangerous handwriting. Some endings need to stay jagged so we never try to return to them. You were the drug I kept whispering “one last time” to. The high that hollowed me. The fire I mistook for warmth. You were the hit that kissed my veins and drained my bones. And here I am, trembling, talking to you like an addict begging the substance to let him go. The irony? You never held on in the first place. You were the kind of poison that apologized for burning while still burning. The kind of absence that pretended to be presence when it needed a place to hide. The kind of love that only shows up after it has already ruined the room. I think of every time I gave you my everything and you handed back the dust of your maybe’s. I was the Giving Tree, and you were the endless taking — carving your name into my bark, pocketing my fruit, breaking my branches to build ladders to somewhere I was never invited. And when you returned, hollow-eyed, soft-voiced, mumbling about “trying again,” I finally saw the arithmetic of it all: You didn’t come back for love — you came back for a place to land. You came back because the world stopped being warm for a moment and you remembered the heat you harvested from me. But I have nothing left to give you. Nothing left to burn. Nothing left to break into pieces small enough for you to swallow. And so I tell you — with the calm of someone who finally understands the pattern, who has mapped the maze, who has outgrown the trap: “We don’t deserve a good ending. We don’t deserve a final chapter written in gold ink and soft words. Some stories are meant to hurt their way into silence.” I open my eyes. You are both there and not — a paradox I no longer chase, a memory I no longer feed, a ghost I no longer fear. And if I’m being honest? Even if you were still standing there, half-shadow, half-regret — I wouldn’t reach for you. Not this time. Not ever again. Because endings don’t have to be fair to be final. And not everyone deserves a good one.

A Good Life Makes Bad Stories memories of her I keep you in the conditional tense, where love only exists if the sentence bends right. You were always an if, never a period just commas where I paused myself waiting for you to breathe me back in. You lived in the negative space of my hands, the outline of a body that never stayed long enough to be named mine. I memorized your absence the way some people memorize prayers repeating it until it felt holy. You loved like a door left cracked on purpose, just enough light to keep me hopeful, just enough cold to teach me longing. Every time I stepped forward you called it pressure, every time I stepped back you called it distance. Funny how I was always wrong no matter where I stood. I mistook your avoidance for mystery, your silence for depth, your detachment for restraint. I thought maybe if I learned your language I could translate myself into someone you stayed for. You were a lesson disguised as a person, a riddle that punished curiosity. You pulled me close just to prove you could let go without bleeding. I bled enough for the both of us. We were parallel lines pretending to intersect always close, never touching, running forever until forever got tired. I loved you in hypotheticals: If we met sooner. If you weren’t scared. If I needed less. If you stayed. I built a house out of maybes and called it hope, then wondered why it collapsed every time you changed your mind. You taught me how love becomes venom when only one heart produces the antidote. How devotion rots when it’s never received, only tolerated. How wanting someone too honestly turns into a crime scene with no witnesses. We replayed the same argument in different outfits— me asking to be chosen, you asking not to be cornered. A push-pull ballet, choreographed by fear and attachment wounds, where the music never stopped and neither did the bruising. I was drowning in your shallow end, reaching for depth you never promised. You swam away calling it self-preservation. I stayed, calling it love. But love shouldn’t feel like rehearsing grief. It shouldn’t require shrinking myself to fit inside someone else’s comfort. It shouldn’t feel like begging the tide to stop doing what tides do. So this is me breaking the loop— stepping out of the cycle before it turns me into someone I don’t recognize. This is me choosing the ending instead of waiting for you to write one without me in it. I’m letting go of the future we never scheduled, the conversations we never had, the versions of you I kept inventing to survive the quiet. I forgive you for not loving me the way I needed— and I forgive myself for calling that patience. They say a good life makes bad stories. Maybe that’s why this hurts— because it almost mattered. Because it could’ve been beautiful if fear didn’t write first drafts and call them boundaries. I won’t carry you as a scar anymore. I’ll carry you as proof that I loved deeply, even when it cost me. This isn’t bitterness. It’s release. I’m closing the door you never locked, walking away from the room where I learned how to miss someone who was never really there. Goodbye to the maybes. Goodbye to the what-ifs. Goodbye to the girl I only knew in fragments. I choose peace over potential. I choose the ending over the endless almost.

It Felt Like Drowning I think you loved me the way people love fire— from a distance, hands shaking, terrified of what warmth might demand once it touches skin. You stood at the edge of your feelings calling it caution, watching me tread water while you debated whether jumping in would save us or sink you. You didn’t want to hurt me. I believe that. But fear has a cruel way of choosing damage control over honesty, and somehow the quiet choices cut deeper than any loud goodbye. You wanted to love me. I felt it—in the pauses, in the nights you stayed longer than planned, in the way your voice softened right before you pulled away. You felt too much and called it confusion because naming it would’ve made it real. So you protected yourself and the cost was me. That’s the math avoidance teaches— save one heart by emptying another. You were ashamed of how deeply you felt, ashamed that I mattered, ashamed that you couldn’t control what your body already knew. You told yourself distance was maturity, that leaving first was growth, that silence was kinder than truth. But silence doesn’t spare anyone. It just lets the wound decide its own shape. I drowned slowly— not from what you did, but from what you almost did. From the affection without commitment, the closeness without permission, the way you drank from my presence until there was nothing left to give back. You liked me. You liked talking to me, being seen by me, feeling understood without being obligated. You wanted to be better, wanted to deserve what I offered— just not enough to choose me while you learned. So you’ll try to replace me. Again and again. Different faces, same distance. Chasing a version of connection that doesn’t ask you to stay. And I might try too— looking for your ghost in unfamiliar hands, wondering why no one fits the silence you left behind. Our trauma stood between us like a shared language spoken with different accents. It brought us close because we recognized the wounds— then tore us apart because we healed in opposite directions. This goodbye isn’t hatred. It’s understanding in its early stages. I’m trying to feel the fear you never let yourself explain, trying to forgive the way love scared you into disappearance. I’m sorry you like me. I’m sorry it hurt. I’m sorry I was something real in a life that only felt safe when things stayed unreal. I don’t think you’re cruel. I think you were drowning too— holding your breath, panicking at the depth, forgetting that some people are meant to be met in the water, not watched from shore. I hope one day you stop running from what feels like home. And I hope one day I stop mistaking fear for something I can fix. This isn’t blame. It’s release. Two wounded people letting go before the water takes us both. Final Chapter — Goodbye I’m leaving quietly, not because you pushed, not because I stopped caring, but because staying would’ve taught me how to disappear. This isn’t an apology born from guilt. It’s one born from understanding— the kind that comes after the hurt has already done its work. I know you needed to hear it, even if I didn’t need to say it. I’m sorry we met at the wrong stage of our healing. Sorry I felt like depth when you were still learning how to float. Sorry my love arrived before your fear loosened its grip. I see you trying. I always did. Trying to be better, trying not to repeat old damage, trying to protect yourself with the only tools you were given. You’re not failing— you’re learning in a language that was never taught gently. You did the best you could with what you had at the time. And I did too. Sometimes that still isn’t enough to save two people from hurting each other. I don’t hate you. I don’t regret you. I’m just done asking love to hurt me less than it already has. I hope one day you don’t flinch when someone wants to stay. I hope affection stops feeling like danger. I hope you learn that being chosen doesn’t mean being trapped. As for me, I’m choosing peace without erasing what mattered. I’m letting you go without turning you into a villain. This is goodbye— soft, honest, and final. Not a door slammed, just one gently closed. You’re doing better than you think. Keep going.

Unrequited Love She said, “I need space… I’m going through a lot right now.” I said nothing. Silence felt safer than asking how much of me she’d leave behind. Someone else told me, “Just give her space… she needs time.” Like time could fix a heart already being replaced. I stayed in my place— not because she asked, but because devotion had already trained me to kneel. Every word she didn’t say, every step she took away, I turned into scripture. I whispered prayers no one could hear. If loving her means shrinking myself until I’m easier to ignore, if devotion is measured by endurance, then this isn’t love. It’s a bad religion. I made altars of small things— the way she laughed, the way she moved, the way she never noticed I existed except to disappear into my waiting. I called patience holiness. I called absence intentional. I called myself worthy for being quiet. But it was just fear. Fear that leaving would mean losing her forever, fear that wanting too loudly would scare her away. I tried to earn what could never be earned. I tried to pray my way into her chest, believing faith could summon attention she never promised to give. And still— she didn’t hurt me on purpose. She just didn’t choose me. And I kept choosing her anyway. Every step back of hers felt like judgment. Every glance elsewhere felt like a sermon I’d failed to follow. I called devotion loyalty, self‑erasure maturity, and silence love. It’s a bad religion when worship is unrequited, when the altar is empty, when sacrifice is invisible to the one it’s offered for. There is no lesson here. No closure. No ritual that leads to peace. Just the truth: I loved her alone. I worshiped something that never looked back. And now I’m still here— not healed, not whole, just awake— alone, where belief goes when it has nowhere left to The Faith I Built I look back now and see the altars I made— each one a monument to absence, each prayer whispered into someone who never asked to hear it. Everything I did— every silence I swallowed, every hope I pressed into bruises, every act of self-erasure— it was a bad religion. Not because she was cruel, not because she didn’t choose me, but because I chose to kneel for someone who never needed devotion. It was unrequited love. A one-sided faith. I worshiped absence. I baptized myself in waiting. I sanctified my own erasure, believed that shrinking made me worthy of love. And now I see it: love isn’t meant to be a ritual of pain and patience. Faith isn’t meant to feel like surrender. Devotion isn’t supposed to erase the one doing it. I let myself be small because I thought it was holy. I let longing become my scripture, fear my commandments. I treated endurance like a sacrament and silence like absolution. Everything I believed was a lie I told myself because I was scared of being alone. It wasn’t her faith that failed me— It was mine. I built a temple with nothing inside but my own devotion, and I worshiped it because it was all I knew. Now I am learning to kneel for no one, to pray into air that will never answer, to see devotion for what it is when it’s unrequited: not love, not holiness, just loss. The bad religion I followed was never hers to take, and it wasn’t mine to keep.