Where Love Heals

You hold pieces of me now—
not because you reached for them,
not because you asked—
but because I never learned
how to love in fragments.

I leave parts of myself behind everywhere I go,
like quiet echoes—
a heartbeat here, a memory there,
soft traces of a soul that never stays whole.
But you…
you were different.

You weren’t an accident,
or something that slipped through my hands.
I gave myself to you—
open, unguarded,
like something sacred placed gently
into uncertain hands.

And you let it fall.

Still—
I would not gather those pieces back
even if I could.

Because loving you, even like this,
even ending here,
was worth every fracture.
I would choose this ache,
this hollow space in my chest,
over a life where I never knew
the way you existed in my world.

I will be okay—
I tell myself that like a promise
I’m still learning how to keep.

But you…
you were never supposed to become
someone I had to forget.

And now here I am,
in the quiet after everything,
grieving something that never fully was—
knowing I have already felt
the last of you.

The last time I’ll see you,
touch you,
hear the sound of you
as it once lived beside me.

And all that’s left now
is the echo—
soft, fading—
of something that meant everything
and still does.

JMS