same feeling. again.
if it stays, it is love.
if it ends, it’s a love story.
if it never begins, it is poetry.
but what happens
when the story ends
and the love stays?
⸻
she knew he would be there.
so she prepared herself for the possibility
of occupying the same space
with someone who once occupied
so much of her life.
or so she thought.
because the body has a peculiar way
of remembering what the mind
has worked so diligently to reconcile.
her heart raced.
her stomach turned.
her breathing became unfamiliar.
and suddenly
the simple act of walking into a room
required a courage
she had not anticipated needing.
but she walked in anyway.
because she had become remarkably practiced at remaining functional in the presence of profound emotional pain.
she knew how to compartmentalize.
how to organize.
how to reason.
how to remain composed
when everything beneath the surface threatened to unravel.
she knew how to do when there was no room to feel.
and so she did what she came to do.
and somewhere in that room was a man she loved.
a man she could hear but could not bring herself to look toward.
a man whose presence had once offered familiarity
and whose proximity
now illuminated the magnitude of his absence.
he was right there.
alive.
breathing.
existing in the same space.
and yet impossibly far away.
she could not reach for him.
not because she had forgotten how.
but because she had decided
that she no longer could.
⸻
there had been no death.
no funeral.
no casket.
no definitive event that made their separation inevitable.
there was simply a decision.
hers.
a decision born of clarity
and the painful recognition that love, however profound, does not always provide what is necessary for two people to remain together.
but the heart does not always move at the speed of conviction.
and grief does not always respect the boundaries established by reason.
because there he was.
the man she loved.
and they were no longer together.
for a moment every reason she had needed to leave grew strangely quiet.
not forgotten.
not invalidated.
simply quiet.
and what remained was the unbearable recognition of someone who had once been
so intimately woven into her existence now standing before her as someone she could no longer know in quite the same way.
she was mourning him.
not merely the relationship.
not simply the imagined future.
not the possibilities
or the promises
or the things that never came to fruition.
him.
the man himself.
the familiar.
the imperfect.
the beautiful complexity
of a human being
she had come to love.
⸻
perhaps what frightened her most
was not the intensity of the grief.
but the unfamiliarity
of the woman experiencing it.
the woman who could not organize
her own way out of sorrow.
who could not reason herself
out of loving someone.
who could not make grief disappear
simply because she had already made
the necessary decision.
she felt fragile.
a word so foreign
to the language
she had spent a lifetime
using to describe herself.
she had survived things
that required extraordinary resolve.
had learned to carry responsibility
alongside disappointment.
to move through life
even when life had given her
every reason to stand still.
and yet
there she was.
undone.
not by death.
not by tragedy.
but by the living presence
of someone
she could no longer hold.
⸻
years earlier she had written about grief.
about the death of a man
who had known her
in ways few others ever would.
and about the loss of another
who remained very much alive.
she had wondered then
which absence
was more difficult to reconcile.
the person who leaves the earth
or the person who remains on it ?
but can no longer remain
in the life once shared.
same feeling.
she called it.
and years later
she found herself
standing inside those very words.
again.
because sometimes
there is no funeral
for the people we lose.
no gathering
to acknowledge the magnitude
of what has ended.
no flowers.
no condolences.
no ceremony
to signify the finality
of a love that once existed.
sometimes
there is only the quiet devastation
of standing in a room
with someone still deeply loved
and understanding
that the intimacy once shared
now belongs entirely
to memory.
and perhaps
that is the peculiar cruelty
of certain endings.
the person remains.
the world continues.
life moves forward
with an almost offensive indifference.
and yet
something has died.
something that cannot be buried
because the people who created it
are still alive.
⸻
she did not regret her decision.
she understood
that loving someone
and being able to remain with them
were not always the same thing.
she understood
that choosing herself
might require leaving someone
she had never stopped loving.
but understanding
did not spare her the grief.
certainty did not soften the absence.
and strength
did not prevent the tears.
perhaps the greatest tenderness
she could offer herself
was permission
to mourn what she knew
she could not return to.
without questioning her judgment.
without revisiting her resolve.
without turning the depth of her sorrow
into evidence
that she had chosen incorrectly.
because grief
is not always a plea for restoration.
sometimes
it is simply love
learning to live
without somewhere to go.
⸻
someday
perhaps she will remember him
without the familiar ache.
perhaps the thought of him
will bring tenderness
rather than devastation.
perhaps she will learn
that love can remain meaningful
without remaining present.
that a story can end
without becoming a mistake.
that something beautiful
can also be insufficient.
and that letting go
does not always mean
the love has gone.
but for now
there is only the memory
of a room.
a familiar presence.
a woman struggling
to recognize herself
beneath the weight of her own sorrow.
and a man
who was right there.
yet so far away.
⸻
if it stays, it is love.
if it ends, it’s a love story.
if it never begins, it is poetry.
but what of the love
that begins
and ends
and somehow
remains?
same feeling. again.