Beloved,
God, we were beautiful once.
We were reckless in the best way ...all curiosity, late nights, tangled hands, & the kind of freedom that makes you believe nothing bad could ever happen to you. I remember loving you without fear back then. I remember how easy it was to believe we’d never become strangers.
Somewhere along the way...we both got lost, I started surviving on fragments of you. Tiny doses of affection stretched across long silences. I kept waiting for the day you would finally love me in full instead of in pieces. I kept hoping the almost would eventually become certainty.
It never did!
& I don’t blame you entirely for that. Maybe we simply loved differently. Perhaps... you could only offer what you had, & maybe I kept asking you for something you were never capable of giving.
But...loving you became painful in the saddest, most exhausting way...like trying to fill an endless ache with spoonfuls of hope.
You left scars in places no one else can see. In the songs I skip now...In how I still catch myself looking for you in moments that have nothing to do with you anymore.
Still, despite everything, I wish you peace.
I hope life is kind to you. I hope you find rest for all the parts of yourself that were always running from being fully known.
& selfishly, I hope a small part of you remembers me the way I remember you...wild & free before the weight of everything settled between us.
But...this is the truth I could never say while I was still trying to keep us alive...
I loved you with my whole heart.
& you loved me in portions.
& eventually, portions stopped being enough.
-always rooting for you-