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There is an ache that lingers in places no one can see, a quiet kind of longing for something—or someone—that once felt like home. Love is supposed to stay, isn’t it? In friendships that swore forever, in family that promised unconditional, in the version of ourselves we once believed in. But love—love is also fragile. It forgets. It slips through fingers even when we hold tight. 

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Some friendships unravel in the spaces where laughter used to live. Conversations turn into echoes, memories into ghosts. You watch them drift, and you tell yourself it’s okay, that people grow and change, that distance doesn’t mean indifference. But deep down, you wonder if they ever look back, if they ever miss you in the way you still miss them. 
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Family is supposed to be the safest place, the arms that never let go. But sometimes, love gets lost in translation, in expectations too heavy to carry. You sit at the dinner table, surrounded yet alone, speaking but unheard. You wonder when home stopped feeling warm, when love became something you had to earn. 

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And then there’s the love within yourself—the hardest to hold onto. The self you abandon in the mirror, the dreams you tuck away for later, the voice inside that whispers, What happened to us? You used to believe in yourself, didn’t you? But somewhere along the way, life chipped at your edges, and now you barely recognize the pieces that remain. 

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Waiting for a love that forgot how to stay—it is a grief that doesn’t always have a name. It is standing in a house that was once filled with light, only to realize you are the only one left, fumbling for a switch that no longer works. 

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Maybe love isn’t meant to stay in the way we expect. Maybe it leaves so we can learn. Maybe the real love we seek is the one we must rebuild within ourselves.

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| free verse |
myinkspeaks