Why couldn’t you have been
some passing fascination,
a hobby I picked up
and left behind in a dusty corner
when life grew crowded?

Why couldn’t you have been
a phase,
a season,
something I remembered fondly
without feeling the ache
of unfinished conversations?

It would have been easier.
I wouldn’t still catch myself
wondering where you’d be
if I had chosen differently.

I wouldn’t wake from dreams
where everything worked out,
where all the roads that collapsed beneath me
somehow held their weight,
where every sacrifice was finally worth its price.

But you weren’t a fling.
You were the thing.
You were the reason I stayed awake
long after I should have slept.

The reason I emptied my pockets
without complaint.
The reason I believed suffering
could somehow be noble.

I suffered for you.
I carried rejection
like a second shadow.
I swallowed disappointment
until it tasted ordinary.

I watched doors close,
watched promises fade,
watched years disappear
while I kept convincing myself
that one more attempt
might change everything.

And maybe that’s what hurts most.
Not losing you.
Not even leaving you.
It’s knowing I loved you enough
to keep choosing you
long after common sense suggested otherwise.

Part of me wishes
I had never cared so deeply.
Not because you weren’t beautiful.
Because you were.

Because even now,
I still hear echoes of you
in unexpected places.

A familiar sound.
An old photograph.
A memory that takes a swing at me
when my guard is down.
Suddenly, I’m back there,
asking impossible questions:

What if?

What if I had pushed harder?
What if I had waited longer?
What if I had endured one more setback?
What if the story ended
just one chapter too soon?

Now there’s someone else.
Or maybe not someone.
Maybe just another possibility
standing patiently at the edge of my life.

And that’s what terrifies me.
Because I know what love costs.
I know what happens
when admiration becomes devotion.

I know how many nights disappear.
How many comforts get sacrificed.
How many pieces of myself
I voluntarily placed on the altar,
just waiting for something real.

I don’t know if I can survive
watching another dream die in my hands.

So I keep my distance.
I study with fragile hope.
I flirt with the possibility
but refuse to surrender.

Not because I don’t see the beauty.
Not because I don’t feel the pull.
But because I remember you.
Because loving you
taught me something I wish it hadn’t:

The greater the love,
the greater the ghost.

Why did it have to be love?
Why couldn’t you have been something less?
Something forgettable.
Something easy to replace.

If you had just been a brief interest,
I wouldn’t still be carrying you.
And I wouldn’t be so afraid
to fall again.