Love doesn’t mean staying.

Sometimes, love means letting go,

And choosing myself anyway.

But distance.

Distance has a voice.

It doesn't shout.

It hums.

Low, persistent.

Like a song I didn’t choose,

but somehow know by heart.

Loving you from afar

isn’t absence.

It’s discipline.

It's knowing I could cross the line,

but choosing not to,

because peace called me by name.

I've chosen peace over war.

I still notice the things that made me stay too long;

the way your silence spoke louder than your promises,

the way I kept translating confusion into hope.

But now I let those memories pass

without offering them a home.

Some days,

I wonder if I you ever feel the echo.

Not regret, not longing,

just the faint awareness

that someone once loved you gently

and learned how to stop.

If loving you from afar was survival,

then this,

this is me learning how to live

without shrinking my heart

to fit someone else’s distance.