What We Didn’t Survive

We loved each other

like people who thought time was infinite.

We said later

as if it were a promise,

not a cliff.

Now I carry your absence

like a second spine—

it holds me up

but bends when I breathe too deeply.

I don’t miss who you were.

I miss who I was

before loving you taught me

how much can be lost

without anyone leaving.

Your name still lives

in the quiet moments—

in grocery aisles,

in half-finished songs,

in the way my chest tightens

when happiness arrives uninvited.

Some loves don’t end.

They just stop being kind.