When Yesterday Let Go
I loosened my grip on yesterday
and watched it fall,
without reaching after it.
Once, I loved you
so deeply
I mistook your leaving
for the end of the world.
The morning came,
but I could not understand
how the sun still rose
when everything inside me
had gone dark.
Your name lived
in the quiet places
between the walls,
inside old songs,
in the empty half
of a bed
I no longer slept in.
I thought heartbreak
was a door slammed shut,
the final page,
the death of every tomorrow.
I mourned the life
I had imagined with you,
and for a while
I could not imagine
a life without you.
Then one morning,
I opened the window.
The air did not ask
what I had lost.
It simply entered.
And somewhere beyond
the ache of yesterday,
a bird was singing
as though the world
had never ended.
That was when I understood
some endings
do not bury us.
Some endings
bury the person
we were before the loss.
I still carry
the shape of what we were.
I still remember
the warmth of your hands,
the promises,
the laughter,
the beautiful foolishness
of believing forever
was something love could guarantee.
But I no longer reach
for what has gone.
I loosened my grip on yesterday
and watched it fall
without reaching after it.
And for the first time,
I did not feel abandoned
by tomorrow.
I felt invited.
So I stepped forward
not because I stopped loving you,
not because it didn't hurt,
but because somewhere
between losing you
and finding myself,
I learned
the world had not ended.
Only ours had.
And there was still
a whole sky
waiting for me
to begin again.
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