kindness

everyone talks about the pain of heartbreak:

your chest aches for their return,

lungs grasping onto air they can no longer hold,

tears like incessant streams of boiling water.

your friends tell you “forget them, they don’t deserve you”,

and you know that they’re probably right.

but you loved them.

so much that —

you can’t hate them for all the mistakes they made,

for the cuts that run too deep, stitched up but never healed.

you reason with yourself—

make excuses for them just so you can bury

the regret gifted by betrayal.

“they were young, they were dumb, they were new to this”,

but so were you.

everyone talks about the pain of heartbreak,

but no one warns you about the torture of

loving, losing, and still having the strength to be kind.