I Burned Our Love Letters

I Burned our Love Letters

Burned love letters, ash on my hands,

I watched them curl into smoke, into silence.

Your name broke apart in the firelight,

no longer a shape I could hold or return to.

I burned your letters, I did not hesitate,

they were only paper, not you, not us.

You are dead now, why keep them,

why let ink haunt drawers and corners of breath.

I opened them once, then I closed them again,

there was nothing there I needed to keep alive.

Only words that no longer knew how to speak to me,

only a past that refused to stay buried.

I am not sentimental, I never was,

feelings do not sit well in my hands for long.

I do not fold grief into pretty shapes,

I do not decorate loss with memory.

I choose silence when silence is cleaner,

I choose fire when fire is honest.

It is past, we are past, no return,

no softened edge to what has already ended.

The days between us do not stretch back,

they collapse like paper under flame.

I do not reach for what has already gone cold,

I do not ask it to stay.

You are gone, that is the only truth,

no letter can argue with that ending.

No ink can bring breath back to paper,

no page can rebuild a heartbeat.

I learned that when I let the match fall,

and did not look away.

I burned your letters without regret,

they did not deserve my hesitation.

If love existed there, it left with you,

what remained was only weight, only dust.

I set it down into fire and watched it leave,

without calling it back.

And now the air is empty where you were written,

no whisper left inside the drawer.

I keep nothing that asks me to bleed backwards,

nothing that insists on staying alive.

You are gone, and I am still here,

standing in what the fire refused to save.

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