HANDS DOWN

Stop fighting to keep people
in your life.
Leaving is not always loss.
Sometimes it is simply
the moment you stop doing
the work of two people
and finally see
what was being held together
by your hands alone.
You should not have to chase
basic effort.
You should not have to
construct
an argument for consistency
as though showing up
were an obscure philosophy
instead of one of the simplest
ways
we tell another person,
you matter here.
You should not be repairing
damage you did not cause
while the person who made it
stands nearby
admiring your ability
to fix things.
Some people will teach you
to mistake exhaustion
for devotion.
They will make closeness
feel conditional,
something granted in increments
and withdrawn without warning,
until you find yourself
working harder and harder
for less and less
and calling it love,
or friendship,
or patience,
because the alternative
would require admitting
how little of it
was ever being returned.
Do not do that to yourself.
Let people reveal
the distance they are willing
to cross.
Let them show you
what they choose
when you stop choosing
for both of you.
You should not have to plead
for reciprocity.
You should not have to
translate
absence into confusion
because the truth
is less comfortable.
You should not have to keep
finding gentler names
for being left alone
inside a connection
that supposedly includes two
people.
Some people leave.
Some people remain,
but only because you have made
remaining effortless for them.
And some people stay
with their own weight
in their own hands.
They reach back.
They repair what they damage.
They notice when the distance
between you begins to widen
and do not wait
for you to cross all of it.
Stop fighting to keep people.
There is nothing noble
about exhausting yourself
to preserve a connection
that disappears
the moment you stop carrying
it.
Put your hands down.
See what remains.