I Will Not Love You When You Leave

Lately I have learn to see the inevitability of things like the sun setting, the flowers dying, the leaves falling, and you leaving.

I love deeply and with everything I have. I am willing to throw caution into the wind and follow you to the end of the earth if you will let me. I can get on my knees and cling onto you like a child and sob with open abandon to beg you to stay if I know that will change your mind.

Nothing will.

So instead, I close my eyes and look away to shield the raw, half-crazed pain from you. I bite my lips, dig my nails into my skin, and nod in quiet acknowledgement at your awkward goodbye.

Letting the words die off in my throat.
Letting our love die a natural death.

The way you loved me was quiet. You held my hand when no one was around. You had no qualm telling me every single thing from your hobbies to your daily routines but clamped up when it came to matters of the heart.

You might be physically close with me but I always felt like you were out of reach. You felt too unworldly and good for me. Even your confession of love although uttered sincerely, I never believed a single word. You eyes so warm and loving yet all I could see were a distant future when your love run cold and those eyes grew hard.

When it finally did, when you uttered those cold fatal words, the tears finally fell. My stone heart started to feel a flicker of emotion.

For your cold words were the most heartfelt words I ever heard from you. They felt the most truthful.

The way I loved you has always been in the past tense.

I commit every detail of your face, your smile, and your voice to my memory for eternity as through I know that one day, I will not see you anymore. When you form a routine with me, fear grips me as I imagined a day I would be forced to go on without you. When you profess your love, my blood turns to ice as I think of the uncertain future when you say the brutal words of how you don’t.

I have been waiting for you to slip up, to fail me, and to stop loving me. So go ahead and treat me coldly, ignore my existence, and walk out casually or create havoc when you leave.

I am well prepared.

Because before your love becomes loved, mine already did.

You may mean the world to me but you are not a part of mine. I could as easily remove you just as how you extinguish my hope. I do not need you to show me how I can be loved when I already am. I am a practical girl. I will not invest in something with no outcome. I will not waste my time in trying to convince you to.

I will not love you if you do not love me back.