If only feelings were not involved… maybe I would be fine. Maybe my chest wouldn’t feel this heavy, like shards of glass buried under my ribs. Maybe I wouldn’t find myself staring at the ceiling, replaying moments that should have been nothing yet meant everything to me.

If only I didn’t feel too much with him. If only I had learned how to hold back, how to protect the fragile pieces of my heart instead of laying them bare at his feet. Maybe then I wouldn’t be sitting here, bleeding in silence over someone who never even asked me to love him this much.

It’s cruel how love grows quietly, how it blooms without permission, and how it destroys everything when it is not returned. He will go on, untouched by the storm that wrecked me. His days will not be haunted by the sound of my laugh, the way his eyes carved a home into my soul. He will not remember the way I memorized his words as if they were sacred scripture.

But me? I am left with this ruin. 

A heart that beats but feels broken.

A body that moves but drags the weight of sorrow.

A soul that whispers again and again: if only… if only… if only.

Maybe it wouldn’t hurt this much.

Maybe I wouldn’t feel like I’m drowning in a sea of my own tenderness.

Maybe I would still be whole.

But I loved.

And I lost.

And now I am left with nothing but the echo of a love that never belonged to me.

-AMS