Truth Poem by cassidy Lovato

There was a time
when I believed love could survive anything.
Youth has a way of convincing us
that wanting something badly enough
is the same as being meant for it.

Back then,
I asked all the questions.
The ones young hearts ask
when they are left holding pieces
of something they cannot fix.

What if we had tried harder?
What if we had been older?
What if timing had been kinder?
What if love had been enough?

For a while,
those questions followed me.
I turned them over in my hands,
searching for reasons,
searching for understanding,
searching for something
that could make sense of the ending.

But time has a way of stripping stories bare.
It peels away excuses.
Removes the paint from old walls.
Shows every crack exactly as it was.

The truth is,
we were never standing on solid ground.

I mistook wanting for love.
Mistook effort for devotion.
Mistook staying for commitment.

I was building a future
while you were building secrets.

And still,
I carried the blame longer than I should have.
Wondered what part of me was lacking.
What I could have done differently.
What I had failed to see.

Then life moved forward.
As it always does.

New roads.
New faces.
New beginnings.

And somewhere along the way,
the questions stopped asking to be answered.

Not because I found closure.
Not because explanations were given.
But because the truth had already revealed itself.

Some stories are not tragedies.
They are lessons.

You were not my forever.
You were the storm that taught me
what shelter should feel like.

The distance between then and now
gave me something neither of us possessed before:
perspective.

And from where I stand today,
the truth looks remarkably simple.

Love should not feel hidden.
It should not demand pieces of yourself
to keep it alive.
It should not thrive in secrets,
half truths,
or locked doors.

Love does not ask you
to become smaller.

Love does not leave you
questioning your worth.

Love does not spend its life
pretending.

The years have carried us
to different lives,
different loves,
different versions of ourselves.

And now,
when I look back,
I do not feel anger.
I do not feel regret.

Only understanding.

Because time revealed
what neither of us could see then.

Some truths arrive all at once.
Others spend years
hidden beneath silence,
beneath carefully chosen words,
beneath the stories we tell
to make ourselves easier to live with.

And sometimes I wonder.

When old memories surface,
when names are spoken,
when someone asks what happened,
what version survives.

What pieces are shared.
What pieces remain buried.
What truths still sit behind locked doors,
waiting for no one to look too closely.

Do you still carry them?
Do you still run from them?
Do you still convince yourself
that silence is the same thing as peace?

I do not ask because I need answers.
Those stopped mattering long ago.

I ask because truth is patient.

It does not disappear.
It does not bend.
It does not stay buried forever.

It waits.

Quietly.
Faithfully.

And sooner or later,
every secret meets its reflection.
Every shadow finds its light.
Every story finds its ending.

Whether spoken aloud
or carried in silence.

The truth remains the truth,
with or without a witness.