“Notes from a Fragile Love”

My second poem of January unfolds as a narrative of emotional exposure: raw, unguarded, and aching. It speaks to the quiet devastation of loving deeply while remaining unloved. The speaker stands as a witness to a fragile relationship he labored to nurture and protect, only to lose both the beloved and the love he poured into her.

“Notes from a Fragile Love”

I let you go
because the tenderness I offered
was never returned.
The passion I carried
became too heavy to hold alone.

When I told you I missed you,
you turned away,
as if longing were a foreign language
you refused to learn.

When I reached out for comfort,
you said, “You’re a man; deal with it.”
In that moment, you taught me
that vulnerability had no shelter with you.
You wanted emotional connection in theory,
but when it was mine,
it became inconvenient.

You wanted to hold my hand in public:
not for love,
not for passion,
but to be seen,
to borrow visibility without commitment.
You wanted the appearance of us,
not the responsibility.

You rationed the words “I love you,”
as if they were scarce.
I gave them freely,
infinitely,
to seal your heart and mine.
You wanted us hidden when it mattered,
a secret folded into convenience.
I wanted love that could stand in the light.

I carried your words inside me like scripture;
you erased mine as if they never mattered.
I remembered your heartbreak line by line,
while you put on earbuds
to silence mine.

I treasured your moans during lovemaking,
the way your body spoke
trust
intimacy
desire
connection
yet in motion,
you called his name,
and I learned my presence
was never singular.

When I spoke of a future with you,
you said you weren’t ready.
When I imagined a child,
a son bearing both our names.

You laughed,
and my hope became a joke.

That is when I understood:
I was listening with my whole soul
to someone who had already tuned me out.

And that is why
I let you go.
Not because I stopped loving you,
but because I finally loved myself enough
to stop offering intimacy
where it could not rest.