Goodbye Poem by Lisa AT

I don't know how to say goodbye
To someone who was supposed to be my life,
There is no clean way to un-weave the thread,
To clear the silence or the quiet strife.
There are too many nights we spent convinced
That anything broken could still be repaired
And God knows I cared.
I cared far more than I ever should,
I'm not walking away from a forgotten spark,
I'm walking away from a fire I stood
And tried to save inside the dark.
​I don't want my last words to be born of rage,
Or for you to remember me only in pain,
Beneath the arguments and bleeding edges
Was someone terrified to lose your name.
Someone who kept reaching across the room,
Believing an us was still buried deep.
Every time you whispered that you were trying,
That you needed time, that I should wait
I believed you. I held on to every word you'd speak,
Because how could I not? You were my home.
So when the cold distance began to grow,
I never thought, He's leaving, he's gone
I thought, we're just struggling but we will hold on.
I didn't know that distance becomes a place
Where some people get comfortable alone.
​We would hurt, fall quiet, and I was the one
Who always reached out through the heavy air.
Not to win, but to prove I was still there,
Hoping to feel you reach back for me too.
But that cycle wore a groove in my chest.
I started to shrink, started to guess
That maybe the flaw was inside my own head
Maybe I was too heavy, too loud, too emotional,
So I tried to become easier to love.
I grew quieter. Patient. I swallowed the lead.
I forgave you before I had even bled out,
Searching for the person I loved in the shadows of doubt.
​But the scales were never even.
When I brought you my heart, fractured and raw,
You treated my pain like an interruption,
A roll of the eyes, a door you would close.
You made me feel foolish for asking for grace,
For begging for tenderness in my own home.
And while we slowly died in the quiet,
You gave your warmth to everyone else
You couldn't even bring yourself to spend Christmas or Valentines Day with me.
A quiet absence that rang like a bell.
On a screen, you posted a beautiful life,
While in reality, weeks went by like a ghost.
And my hurt became your favourite excuse
To give up the work when I needed it most.
​How long does it take to fix what is torn?
Does it take a year and a half of silence?
Or is the truth simply that one of us quit,
And let their heart wander off in the dark?
Maybe no physical line was ever crossed,
But emotional distance is still a cost.
The deepest betrayal was knowing someone else
received the closeness I was begging to hold.
And yet you kept telling me I was the one,
Keeping me anchored while I watched you run.
I wasn't just losing you,
I was losing you while being told you were still mine.
​I won't spend my life correcting the stories
You tell to the world to make yourself clean.
Let them think what they want. I know what I gave.
I know I wasn't perfect, I know I had flaws,
But I loved you with everything left in my chest.
Eventually, something inside me just died...
Not in anger, but in utter exhaustion.
A soul gets tired of asking the same thing....
Do you still choose me? Do you want me here?
You shouldn't have to earn your place in the light.
You shouldn't have to chase the person you love through the night.
​I loved you enough to stay through the cold,
But staying was teaching me how to live alone.
The hopeful part of me has disappeared.
I don't hate you.... I wish that I did.
I still remember the good, the quiet, the sweet,
And that's why this goodbye cuts so deep.
I'm not throwing away something meaningless;
I'm escaping a house I could no longer survive in.
​I needed reciprocity. Honesty. Effort.
I needed to stop abandoning myself
Just to keep saying that we were still whole.
So I am walking away.
I am leaving the door I stood outside for so long,
Waiting for you to decide if I belonged.
​I hope you find peace. I hope you grow tall.
Remember I loved you. Remember I tried.
There was a woman on the other side of those walls
Who was only desperately trying to be seen.
I don't need an apology now, nor your truth,
I just need to be free of explaining my grief.
​You were supposed to be home.
Now I am taking my memories into the night,
The good, the bad, the dark, and the light.
I wish love had been enough.
I wish we had fought for each other instead.
But I can't go back.
​So goodbye to the person I loved so deep.
Goodbye to the future I promised to keep.
Goodbye to the version of us I kept waiting to see.
And goodbye to the part of me that believed
I could love us enough for the both of us.
​I couldn't. Nobody can.
​I didn't leave because I stopped loving you.
I left because loving you was costing me myself
And I can no longer pay that price.
​I love you.
But I am moving on.