Goodbye

I release your ruin—
the wreckage you scattered
like shards across my path,
each step a bloodletting
I told myself was worth it
if it led me closer to you.

I release the storms you named love,
the thunder that silenced my voice,
the lightning that struck only to burn.
I release the years bent beneath your shadow,
the marrow I carved from my own bones
just to feed the hollow you left.

I release the silence that hollowed me,
the endless ache of waiting at a locked door,
believing if I knocked gently enough,
if I bled long enough,
you would open,
and call me home.

I release the hope—
God, the hope—
that fragile, radiant thing
I watered with my longing,
believing one day it would grow
into the shape of the love I begged for.

It does not grow.
It withers in my hands.
And I let it die with you.

I walk away lighter,
yes—
but lightness can ache too.
For in loosening my grip on your absence,
I loosen my grip on the dream
that you might have been
what I needed.

And that is the sharpest grief:
not that you ruined me,
but that I must bury the ghost
of the love you never gave.

This is the knife of goodbye—
it twists not in the letting go of you,
but in knowing the version of you I longed for
will never come.

Keep My Words Alive

If this poem has stayed with you, you can help keep my words alive or explore more of my work. Every bit of support helps carry the stories forward.