If I Screamed

 If I screamed out,

would you actually hear me?
Or would my voice
fade into the background,
just another echo
lost between us?

You're slipping away.
I feel it in the silence,
in the spaces where you used to reach for me.
And the hardest part is knowing
there's nothing I can do
to stop what's already happening.

I warned you this day would come.
Not because I wanted it,
but because I knew.
Because reality was always waiting
just outside the door.

One day,
it would have to be
me or her.

I never wanted to be right.

As much as we want to stay in each other's lives,
as much as you tell me I'm always on your mind,
as much as I know
I've found a place somewhere in your heart...

the place beside you
belongs to someone else.

And I don't understand it.
Maybe I never will.

How can someone hold your heart
yet never hold your hand?
How can love exist
without being chosen?

Those are questions
I'll probably carry forever.

But love,
real love,
isn't measured by what it keeps.
Sometimes it's measured
by what it's willing to let go.

So I'm trying.
Trying to respect the choice
that breaks me.
Trying to accept
that your happiness
may never look like my own.

Because despite everything,
despite the ache,
despite every part of me
wanting the ending to be different...

I love you.

And if loving you
means wanting your happiness
even when it costs me mine,

then maybe this goodbye
has been written
long before either of us
was ready to read it.