I haven’t loved you enough to let you go.

The smell of your perfume lingers in my car like it's the air I breathe, no matter how suffocating it feels, and I can never stop myself from thinking that maybe … somewhere else, in your quiet moments, you still sit there and stare at the same sky.

Your name is carved deep into my heart, a truth I despise but cannot erase; and here I am, waiting for the world you have promised—the one that turns out never even once existed. And just as frightening as it is, your laugh echoes in my room like a haunting lullaby, keeping me awake when all I want is peace.

On those nights, I tried. I tried. I tried. I stood still and stayed awake because I am my very own person in every broad daylight. On those nights, I lived. I lived. I lived. I breathed out of suffocation, soaked in blood, all red and blue; yet it never once seemed enough to rid you.

Take my life. Take my belongings. Take just everything. Take me back. Take me to you. Because no matter how far I go, your ghost follows, turning into something I can never escape from, and slowly, I am dead, devastated by your absence.

I still want to keep believing in our ‘one day’. Thus I will try. I will try. I will try; even if it takes seven deaths to bring you back to life, because in fact, in the very end, a small part within my hollow heart still searches for its missing piece, and will forever do until it reaches you to say that even after all those years, I haven’t loved you enough to let you go.

I am the incurable heartache longing for you. I am the choking suffocation aiming my own life. I am the death, the loneliness, the dried flowers you left behind.