How do you love

when leaving is already written?

I let you in,

though I swore I never would again—

I swore strangers could stay strangers,

that the journey from one empty face to another

was enough to fracture me.

Yet here you are.

And here I am,

a body made of shadows and the echo of your name.

I wanted to touch you

and I felt the weight of absence

in every breath between us.

I wanted to hold you

and the ghost of goodbye

sat heavy on my chest.

I cannot stop it.

I cannot stop myself from wanting

what is already slipping away.

The laughter we shared

rings now like shards of glass.

Every word you speak

is a promise I cannot trust.

Every smile, a reminder

that I am counting the days

until your absence

becomes the only thing I know.

I crave you,

and hate myself for it.

I reach for you in my mind

and find only shadows.

I trace the lines of your face

in memory,

in the spaces between memory

and death of touch.

Your scent lingers

in the folds of my sheets,

in the air that moves without you,

in the hollow corners

of rooms that now remember you better than I do.

I close my eyes,

and it is you again—

or it is just the memory of you

torturing me,

reminding me of what cannot last.

I am alone with you here,

and still you are gone.

I speak your name to the walls,

to the quiet room,

to the nothingness

that answers only with silence.

And the silence is sharp,

and it cuts deeper than anything you have ever done.

How do you love

when every heartbeat is a countdown

to the moment your hands leave mine?

When every word, every brush of skin,

every glance

is already a prelude to grief?

I taste your absence

like metal on my tongue,

like bitter ash,

like fire that refuses to leave its mark.

I remember everything:

the weight of your hair,

the tremor in your voice,

the warmth that was mine

for a brief, unbearable instant.

I remember,

and it kills me,

again and again.

I am dying slowly,

in increments,

every time I allow myself to remember.

I will not forget.

I will not forgive the future

that steals you from me.

I will carry this longing

like a wound that never closes,

like a shadow I cannot outrun.

I will learn the exact shape of your absence,

and it will become my language,

my prayer, my sentence.

I will love you

even as love becomes a chain,

a slow fire that consumes all else.

Even as grief becomes my companion,

as longing becomes my shadow.

Even as the world moves

and you move,

and I remain

here,

trembling,

marked,

haunted by what cannot be held.

And when the nights are long

and the air refuses comfort,

I lie awake

with your absence

pressed like a blade to my ribs,

and I count the ways you have left me

before I count the ways I will survive

this endless, unrelenting ache.