She Was Trying to Leave

It didn’t start with a suitcase.

Or shouting.

Or slammed doors.

He asked why I was distant.

Held out gifts like glue.

Cheated, then cried.

Cried, then blamed me.

Apologized with the same hands

that once left bruises.

I still made dinner.

Still folded towels.

Still smiled in front of them

and locked the bathroom door

when I needed to fall apart.

It started with a whisper to myself,

then out loud to him:

This is not the life I want them to think is love.

But I was already gone.

Not in body—

not yet.

But in the quiet way

a candle knows it’s burning out.

I lived a year in that goodbye.

Treading water

in the same walls

he stained with silence

and second chances

he never earned.

He wouldn’t go.

Said we were not over.

That I didn’t get to make that decision.

That this was his family.

There were nights

I checked the locks twice

and still didn’t sleep.

Nights I imagined

my name on a documentary

spoken past tense.

"She was trying to leave..."

But I stayed.

For a while.

Long enough to find a way

to go

without leaving them behind.

And when I did—

when the key turned

in the door of a house

he’d never set foot in—

I breathed for the first time

in years.

Not all exits are flames.

Some are just

the steady, aching shift

of a woman choosing

not to let her daughters believe

this is what love looks like.

I didn’t run.

I waited.

I withstood.

And then—

I let go of the brake.

And we drove

into something like peace.