Loving A Ghostly Promise

Loving someone who was never real and just empty promises. All make believe

I missed the red flags in your shadows,
too busy loving the glow you staged.
You held me with words that sounded honest,
even if the honesty was paper-thin.
I touched the dream of you
without realizing it was smoke,
and the closer I reached,
the more it slipped through my fingers.

Now I stand here—
different, bruised, but still me—
staring at the man you really are,
and wondering how I ever loved the lie
more than the truth.

I search your eyes for the softness
you used to perform so well,
but all I find are sharp edges
you hid for later.
The distance between us grows,
an ache stretching wider than the sky.

And I don’t know how to love you now—
not this version,
not the one who never learned
that real love is not theater.

Yet still,
in the quiet places of my heart,
I mourn him—
the man you never were,
the man I built hopes around,
the man who fit the shape of my loneliness
even if he wasn’t real.

But I’m done dimming myself
to match someone else’s shadows.
Being different has always been my strength—
my wild note in a practiced song,
my hand-stitched soul refusing to unravel.

So I let the ghost go.
I step back onto my crooked road.
And though loving you taught me pain,
leaving you will teach me truth.

Because I was never meant
to love a ghost—
I was meant
to become whole.