You must leave me
alone
if you have no
intention
of arriving with
sincerity.

Not because I am
asking for forever.
Not because I need a
promise
before I let you sit
beside me.

But because there is a
particular cruelty
in reaching for
someone
with hands that
already know
they will let go.

You saw me.

That is what makes it
harder.

You saw the way I
loved-
without keeping an
account of it.
The way I made room.
The way I listened for
the sentence
beneath the sentence.
The way I remembered
small things
people usually forget
about themselves.

You saw how gently
I carried what was
entrusted to me.

And still,
you came closer
while carrying your
own wreckage
like a matchbook in
your pocket.

You knew you were not ready.

Perharps you called it
confusion.
Perhaps you called it
timing.
Perhaps you told
yourself
you were only seeing
where this went.

But someone else's
heart
is not a wainting room
for the life you haven't
learned
how to live.

You do not get to enter
because you are lonely
and leave because you
are afraid.

You do not get to
borrow
someone's tenderness
while deciding
whether
you are capable of
returning it.

And you certainly do
not get
to discover how loved
you can feel
inside somebody's
hands
and then hand their
loneliness back
to them as it it were
always theirs.

You saw my light.

I wish people
understood
that light is not an
invitation
to come closer and
take from it.

Sometimes a person
shines
because they have
spent years
learning how to keep a
small fire alive
through weather
no one else ever saw.

You came into the
room
and warmed yourself.

You did not ask
what it cost me to keep
the fire burning.

And when you left,
you left the door open.

You left the cold
behind.

This is the part
I want you to
understand:

peace is not an
inexhaustible
resource.

There are kinds of
peace
we spend years
building.

A morning without
checking the phone.
A night without
wondering
whether silence means
abandonment.
The ability to believe
that someone's
tenderness
does not have an
expiration date.

The quiet return
of trusting your own
judgment.

That strange,
miraculous moment
when your nervous
system
finally stops mistaking
uncertainty
for love.

I had that.

And then you came
along.

And now I am left
to gather myself
from places I did not
leave myself in.

Tell me-

when you know
you cannot love
someone carefully,
what makes you reach
for them?

When you know
you are still bleeding
from somewhere else,
why put your hands
on someone's else's
skin?

When you know
you cannot stay,
why teach someone
the shape of your
absence?

There are
consequences
to being careless with
a person
who loves you
honestly.

Not dramatic ones.

Not the kind that make
good stories.

Sometimes the
consequence
is simply this:

someone becomes a
little harder to reach.

Someone who used to
believe
in the uncomplicated
goodness
of being chosen
starts reading the fine
print.

Someone who once
opened the door
without asking who
was standing outside
begins looking through
the peephole.

And maybe you will
never know
what you changed.

Maybe you will go on
and call it another
almost.

Another person.
Another chapter.
Another thing that
simply
didn't work out.

But I will know.

Because I will be the
one
who has to teach my
heart
that your carelessness
was not evidence
that I was foolish to
love.

I will be the one
who has to coax peace
back into the house.

And maybe it will
return.

I hope it does.

But listen carefully:

you do not get to
destroy
someone's peace
and call it the cost of
finding yourself.

Somebody else's heart
is not the laboratory
for your unfinished
healing.

If you are not ready,
say so.

If you are affraid,
say so.

If you cannot stay,
say so.

But do not pull me
close enough
to make me believe
I am safe here
when you already
know
you are holding the
door open.

Because I was not
asking you
to save me.

I was asking you
not to hurt me
with something
you already knew
you could not carry.

And there is a difference.

A very large one.

So leave me alone
until you know

Because I can
survive
the truth that
you cannot love
me.

What I do not
know
if I can forgive
is being loved
just enough
to make me
forget
how peaceful I
was
before you came.

Faraz Arif Ansari
art: Persian-Iranian bas-relief