Can I escape please

I want you still. God, I do. Like rain wants the ground it can’t touch again, like a song aching for the voice that forgot how to sing it. But wanting you feels like standing barefoot in the ruins of something holy, trying to gather light with bleeding hands.

You were all softness and small mercies. A soul so pure it made guilt look like shadow against your light. You loved me like prayer, not loud, but certain, and I answered like thunder, too proud, too afraid, too late. Now my silence carries your name the way oceans carry salt, a truth too deep to wash away.

I keep replaying the quiet moments, how you used to laugh like forgiveness had a sound. And when you smiled, the whole room leaned closer to listen. You were warmth made human, and I was frost pretending not to melt. You reached out, and I recoiled, confusing care for danger, and safety for boredom.

You were gentle, and I treated you like a test. You were a mirror, and I cracked it trying not to see myself. Now every reflection in my life wears your outline. Even joy feels borrowed from you. Every kind thing I do feels like an apology you’ll never hear.

Sometimes I see your face in strangers, and my body forgets what year it is. I almost reach out, almost say your name, almost believe that time could forgive what I couldn’t. But the truth sits heavy. I am the reason your heart learned to flinch, the reason purity hides now behind other people’s eyes.

And yet, I love you still, not like a flame, but like ash, quiet, constant, impossible to undo. You live in my chest like the echo of a bell that hasn’t rung in years but still owns the air. You haunt me softly, like light through cracked blinds, like a hymn no one remembers the words to but everyone still feels.

If love were fair, you’d be here. If I were kind, you’d still want to be. But I loved you like someone drowning, holding too tight, mistaking breath for belonging. And you, beautiful you, you let me go without teaching me how to live without you.

Now I walk through my days carrying the ghost of your presence like a second pulse, still searching for the sound of your forgiveness in the wind. Because no matter how far I run, I keep circling back to the truth, that love doesn’t leave when the person does. It stays, it lingers, it becomes the very air you breathe, and I have been inhaling you ever since.