When did you stop loving me?

There’s an ache that comes with loving somebody who has already had unconditional love, with a pure and genuine heart. It’s like trying to be part of a story that’s already been told, knowing you aren’t the first person to make them smile or the first to make their heart skip a beat. And as much as i try to convince myself that the past doesn’t matter, i just cant help but wonder, did they love them in a way i will never understand? did they give their heart so completely that there’s bare.

Everything gets blurry; maybe it was the night i cried for the tempestuous time, and you sighed, not out of care, but inconvenience. Sadness must’ve sounded like a rerun: same tone, same tears, same situation. You looked at me the way someone look at a clock that won’t stop ticking, tired, waiting for my turn to win, i still replay that look you used to give me, the one that said I was your lover to the moon and back. Funny, i didn't notice when that world became too small for you. Maybe i was the old city you outgrew, the one with familiar corners and fading lights.

We cope in different ways, you didn’t leave me, you just left the version of yourself that i once believed in forever, sadly. Was it that morning i said i wanted to spend a day with you? Or when i said i needed you to stay, and you suddenly remembered all the places you had to be. Perhaps i was loving too much, but i call it devotion, because when i said love, i took it deeply and i tried, i always tried. And maybe it’d be easier if i just didn't ask.

I didn’t stop, not when you stopped saying goodnight, not when your eyes turned colder than the bedroom tiles i sat on waiting for a reply. Not even when distance became your favorite word, and i mistook it for peace instead of absence. Love turns quiet before it turns cruel, and i guess ilearned that the hard way. Some of us don’t let go, we just cope in different ways.

Who are you when you are not performing, maybe just a cup of cold coffee