🌸 the empty seat

You told me
there was always an empty seat
where I used to be.

You said you left it untouched,
as if ten years of silence
were just another way
of saying I missed you.

And for a moment,
I wanted to believe you.

I wanted to believe
that somewhere between
the years we lost,
the marriages we built,
the children we held,
and the lives we learned to live—

there was still a version of us
sitting quietly together,
waiting for the ending
we never got.

But then I asked myself:

If that seat was really mine,
why did you never call?

Ten years.

Ten birthdays.
Ten years of ordinary mornings.
Ten years of rainy nights.
Ten years when you knew
the world was still big enough
to find me—

and you didn’t.

Maybe you missed me.

Maybe you loved me.

Maybe some part of you
still does.

But love is a strange thing
when it never becomes a choice.

Because you built a life
without me.

You learned how to be a father.
You held another woman’s hand.
You made another home.
You filled the years
I thought belonged to us
with someone else’s name.

And I did the same.

So perhaps that empty seat
was never waiting for me.

Perhaps it was only
the shape of a memory.

A ghost sitting quietly
inside your heart,
just as you became a ghost
inside mine.

And God,
I am tired of ghosts.

I am tired of wondering
whether your I love you
means forever
or only I remember.

I am tired of turning
every word you say
into a doorway
back to 2008,
back to the girl I was,
back to the boy you were,
back to the life
that never happened.

We were real.

That is enough.

We loved.

That is enough.

We lost each other.

That is enough.

I don’t need another kiss.
I don’t need another promise.
I don’t need you to choose me
after all these years
just to prove
that I was worth choosing.

I know I was.

And maybe that
is the last thing
I need to learn from you.

So keep your empty seat.

Keep the memories.
Keep the old conversations.
Keep the version of me
you secretly missed.

I will keep my life.

My children.
My home.
My mornings.
My ordinary days.
My ridiculous laughter.
My future.

And one day,
when your name crosses my mind,
I hope it won’t hurt.

I hope I will simply smile
and think—

God, we were young.

We loved each other once.

And then we grew up.

So this is not
me asking you to stay.

This is me
finally asking myself
to leave.

Not because
you never loved me.

But because
love was never supposed to be
the place where I stopped living.

Goodbye, my almost.

Goodbye,
my first home.

Goodbye
to the empty seat.

I’m coming home to myself now.