Still Choosing You: A Poem About Loving Someone After Goodbye

 

The Unlikely Tree — Meant to Be Forever

We were not a mistake.
No.
We were meant to be.
In every star I counted,
In every whisper I made into my pillow at night,
It was always you.
Always us.

I didn’t imagine this love.
I didn’t dream it up out of loneliness or desperation.
It was real.
You held my heart like it belonged in your palms,
And I swear—
I swear, my love—
It beat for you, just for you.

We were a tree growing from the same soil,
Our roots tangled under the quiet earth,
Drinking from the same longing,
Breathing the same sky.
And I…
I thought this would be forever.

But something happened.
Something small at first—
Maybe a look, maybe a silence.
Then a shift.
A crack.
A breath too far away.

And now—
Now it’s night.
Now I am alone.
Now everything that was once us
Is ash on my hands,
Smoke in my lungs,
Pain in my ribs that no one can see.

I laugh—
Fake.
Ugly.
Hollow.
Because if I don’t, I’ll cry again,
And I’ve cried too much already.

I punch the bag until my knuckles scream,
Until my breath forgets how to carry your name.
I talk with friends and make jokes,
Smiles stitched into place like lies.
Just to ease my ache.
My torment.
Yes, that’s the word.
The torment of losing what felt like destiny.

You were my destiny.
I never doubted that.
Even now, with the silence growing louder between us,
Even now, when you won’t come back—
You are still the one I imagined grey hair and soft mornings with.
Still the one I wanted to find God beside.
Still the one my soul knew before my eyes did.

It hurts.
God, it hurts.
Because it wasn’t supposed to end.
Not like this.
Not so fast.
Not without a war.
Not without at least a scream, a fight, a final kiss.

But you left.
Or maybe I broke.
Or maybe both of us did.
I don’t know.

What I do know is that tonight feels different.
Colder.
Empty in a way that echoes.
I lie in bed listening to the ghosts of our laughter.
To the soft sound of what once was.
To the forever that never got its chance to begin.

And still—
Even now—
Even with these wounds and this silence and this wreckage—
I would choose you again.
Again and again and again.

Because we were not a mistake.
We were not an illusion.
We were the unlikely tree that grew with all its heart
Even in the wrong season.

And maybe—
Maybe love like ours doesn’t die.
Maybe it just
Waits
For a better time,
A kinder world,
Or the next lifetime.

Until then,
I will carry you—
Every broken branch,
Every beautiful bloom,
Every soft whisper of what we were.

Not because I can’t let go.
But because
You will always be
My forever.