The People We Become
What happens when you still love someone —
but no longer recognize the person they have become?
An original Lyrmotion poem inspired by the emotional world of Maxton Hall.
I miss the person
you were
before you hurt me.
The one who looked at me
as though the whole world
had suddenly gone quiet.
The one who made
all the differences between us
feel small enough to disappear
in each other's arms.
I knew your eyes.
I knew your silences.
I knew the way
your face changed
when you forgot
to protect yourself
from being seen.
At least,
I thought I did.
Then something happened.
Maybe life.
Maybe grief.
Maybe all the things
you carried
long before you carried me
in your heart.
And suddenly
I was standing
in front of someone
with your eyes,
your voice,
your name —
but I could no longer
find you there.
Do you know
what kind of heartbreak that is?
To lose someone who hasn't left?
To love a person
standing right in front of you
and still ache for their return?
I tried to reach you.
Then I tried
to understand you.
Then I tried
to save what was left of us.
Until one day I understood:
love cannot ask one heart
to break forever
just because another
is already broken.
So I built walls.
Not because
I stopped loving you.
Because I had to learn
how to love myself
in a world
where loving you
had begun to hurt.
And still —
sometimes
one look from you
makes every wall
forget why I built it.
Sometimes
I see you again.
Just for a second.
The person
I fell in love with.
The person
who made forever
feel less like a promise
and more like a place
we had already been.
And perhaps
that is the hardest part:
I don't want
another version of you.
I don't want the memory.
I don't want the almost.
I want you
to find your way
back to yourself.
Not for me.
Not even for us.
For you.
And maybe,
somewhere after that,
if life is kind,
we will find each other again.
Not as the people we were.
But as the people
we survived
long enough
to become.