My heart never forgot how to love you
my heart still beats your name in quiet moments between breaths.
I simply came to understand that wanting someone and being wanted back are two different kinds of pain.
So I chose the harder love: the love of letting go, the love of choosing myself when every fiber of my being wanted to keep choosing you.
It not that I stopped caring, it was that caring became a weight too heavy for hands that were always reaching toward someone who was always just out of reach.
You still visit my thoughts, but now as a gentle guest rather than a storm. I think of you without the sharp edges, remember the love I offered like sunlight through windows, warm, generous, freely given.
You will always have a room in the house of my heart, but I’ve learned that love cannot take root where the soil doesn’t welcome it.
There was strength in the surrender, grace in the goodbye I never said aloud. I realized I deserve to be chosen with the same tenderness I was so ready to give.
Moving forward isn’t forgetting, it’s accepting the beautiful truth that we weren’t meant to be, and that my love, this vast and careful love, will find its way to someone who treasures it as much as I do.
For now, I hold onto the lessons, not the longing.
I carry forward the knowing that I am capable of loving deeply, and worthy of being deeply loved in return.