CorePoet

06/13/2026

What Loving You Cost Me
Loving you cost me two friends

who tried to warn me

and I chose you instead.
It cost me a job opportunity

I talked myself out of

because I didn't want to rock the boat.
It cost me months of sleep,

an embarrassing number of journal pages,

and a therapist who now knows

more about you than you ever knew about me.
It cost me the version of myself

who didn't automatically assume

she was the problem.
But here's what it didn't cost me —

and this is the part you don't get to take:
It didn't cost me my dignity.

Not completely.

I pulled that back at the last second

like grabbing something from a fire.
It didn't cost me my capacity to love.

Even now, burned and angry,

I love hard. I love real.

I love in a way you never quite managed.
And it didn't cost me my future.

That's still mine.

Every single day of it —

mine,

and not a single one of them

has your name on it.

06/13/2026

You Taught Me to Doubt Myself
You never yelled.

That's the thing people don't understand.

You didn't have to.
You had quieter weapons —

the sigh when I talked too long,

the look when I wore the wrong thing,

the silence that lasted just long enough

to make me wonder what I'd done.
You made me apologize for my own hunger.

For wanting more conversation,

more presence,

more than the scraps of attention

you tossed my way on good days.
I started prefacing everything with sorry.

Sorry for calling. Sorry for feeling.

Sorry for existing at a volume

that inconvenienced you.
I was not too loud.

You were just too small

to handle a woman who knew what she wanted.
And I'm done being sorry for that.

I'm done making myself a whisper

for someone who never deserved my voice.

06/13/2026

What Nobody Tells You
Nobody tells you that heartbreak

sounds like your own laugh

suddenly feeling foreign in your chest.
Nobody tells you about the grocery store —

how aisle three becomes a crime scene

because you used to argue there

about which pasta to buy.
Nobody tells you healing isn't linear.

Some days I'm mountains.

Some days I'm just wet grass.

06/13/2026

The Silence After You
I still reach for my phone at midnight,

forgetting you don't text me anymore.

There's a mug on the shelf I can't move —

the one you left with coffee rings

dried into rings that look like promises.
I keep telling myself I'm fine.

The word tastes like an empty room.

06/12/2026