No you tomorrow

A poem about emptiness from losing someone you love

A No You Tomorrow

By Shawn P Cassidy

I know why you left.

Not because you stopped loving me,

but because you finally understood

what loving me was costing you.

You were carrying the weight of my broken promises,

the half-truths I kept handing you

like they were enough to build a future on.

I treated our engagement like a shelter

I could hide inside

without ever repairing the walls.

You saw the real me.

Not the version I performed,

not the man I pretended to be

when the world was watching.

You saw the frightened boy underneath,

the one who kept collapsing

every time you tried to hold him steady.

You stayed too long in the wreckage I created.

You kept trying to save someone

who wasn’t trying to save himself.

I chased distraction.

I chased validation.

I chased anything that kept me from facing

the damage I was doing to you.

You cried in silence

while I convinced myself

I still had control.

But you did the one thing

I never believed you would do.

You stopped waiting for me to change.

You stepped out of the collapse

and left me standing in the dust

of my own making.

Now the nights are colder.

The mornings are heavier.

The truth sits in the room with me

like a shadow that refuses to move.

This is the consequence.

This is the cost.

This is the world I wake up to

when there is

a no you

tomorrow.

© 2026 Shawn P. Cassidy. All rights reserved