No one tells you
that the hardest place to stand
is not in love.

It is at the threshold of leaving it.

There is no ceremony there.

No applause for choosing yourself.

Only the quiet sound
of a door closing
that neither of you really wanted to shut.

We spend so much of our lives
believing heartbreak begins
when someone leaves.

I don’t think it does.

I think heartbreak begins
the moment we realize
love cannot ask another person
to become someone they are not.

That is the impossible place.

To love someone
without wanting to change them.

To accept someone
without being able to stay.

I used to believe
that if two people fit together,
they would eventually find a way.

Now I wonder
if some people are meant
to teach us
that connection
and permanence
are not the same thing.

The ocean reaches the shore
thousands of times a day.

It never mistakes
touching
for keeping.

Maybe love is sometimes like that.

Not a failure.

Not unfinished.

Simply something
that arrived
to change the shape
of your heart
before returning
to the place
it belonged.

For months,
I kept mistaking
returning
for choosing.

Every goodbye
became another beginning.

Every ending
borrowed hope
from the one before it.

Until hope itself
became the thing
I had to release.

It is a strange kind of grief
to stop waiting
for someone
who never asked you to.

To realize
they were telling the truth
all along.

Not because they didn’t care.

But because caring
was never the same thing
as being able to stay.

Some truths
do not arrive
to comfort us.

They arrive
to set us free.

I don’t know
how long love takes
to loosen its grip.

Perhaps hearts
do not heal
by forgetting.

Perhaps they heal
by making room.

Room for gratitude.

Room for sorrow.

Room for what was beautiful
without demanding
that it should have lasted.

Maybe that is what
this threshold is for.

Not to erase you.

Not to rewrite us.

Only to teach me
that walking away
is sometimes
the deepest act of love
I can offer myself.

So today,
I step forward.

Not because
I love you less.

But because
I finally love myself enough
to stop asking
a closed door
to become
an open one.

Jacque Michele