THE ACHE OF SHARED HISTORY

a closure to emotional attachment

There was a time
mornings arrived like uninvited guests.
Breath felt borrowed, a debt I couldn’t pay.
Nights surrendered early,
dissolving into the chemical quiet of pills.

I was a hollow vessel
empty enough to echo,
alive only because dying felt too loud.

You stayed,
You didn’t demand the light.
You simply sat with me in the dark
and gave me time
the patient, unhurried kind.

For a long while, I had no horizon of my own.
My only purpose had your name in it.
I was a satellite, finding gravity
only in the pull of your orbit.

I began to chant
first as a bribe for your love,
then as a rhythm for my breath,
now, finally, as an anchor for my soul.

But the seasons shifted.
Your replies grew parched,
the warmth of our language cooled.
I held on tighter,
mistaking rope-burn for closeness.

You said “LET GO.”
I heard “DISAPPEAR.”

I tried to shape a soul you would approve of.
Spiritual, calm,
forged in your image.
But a year is a long time
to wear a mask
that doesn’t fit the face.

Then came the breaking point
an incident that pulled the ground from beneath me.
The dark grew so dense
even God felt far.
And your actions cut colder
than your silence ever had.
In that frost, Trust dissolved.

I hated you.
Then I missed the wound.
Then I hated the part of me that still craved for salt.

Therapy held the tears you couldn’t.
Meditation softened the wound edges.
And when I finally let go of the rope,
it wasn’t the ground that held me.
It was KRISHNA.

Yet you remain
not as a need but a quiet, honest ache.
I no longer reach for you to survive,
I only ask for the warmth of your good company.
Just a “How are you?” that carries weight.
A moment of time offered, not extracted.
A hug, if you could.

But I fear reaching for the light
of a star already gone cold.

Ego warns me that silence is safety.
It calls distance “self-respect,”
but I fear it’s just an anchor
I have mistaken for wings.

I place the tangle of it all
the love, the ache, the trembling “if”
at His Lotus Feet.

The vessel is still on the wheel.
I trust THE POTTER.

Author's Note

These words are for the best person I have met in recent years, written to bring respectful closure to my emotional attachment to her.

Reviews

[jacob erin-cilberto]

This is wonderfully written closure...with respect but also a need for the speaker to be able to stand on her own. I love you for being there when I needed you but now I need to not need you. I need to pull back from reaching for that particular star.
Nice work here.
j.

[Pallavi]

Thank you for your words J!