I sit beside you holding words like water in my mouth— afraid they will drown…

I sit beside you
holding words
like water in my mouth—
afraid they will drown you
if I let them spill.

You tell me the same story
with new bruises,
new apologies for him,
new reasons to wait.

I nod
like I am not breaking too.

Do you know
what it is to watch
someone you love
slowly disappear
and still smile
so they don’t feel judged?

I learn the geography of your pain—
which tone means you cried already,
which laugh is a cover,
which silence means
you’re still hoping.

I want to shake the walls down.
I want to gather your clothes in boxes.
I want to drive through the night
until his name
can’t find you.

But love does not drag.
Love does not force open locked doors.

So I sit with you
in the burning.

You say,
“but he’s trying.”
and I swallow the truth
that effort is not the same
as change.

You show me the smallest kindness
like it is a sunrise
and I call it beautiful
because I cannot crush
the hope
you are surviving on.

Do you know
how carefully I speak your name
so it sounds like
home?

How I stitch your worth
back together
in every conversation
hoping one day
you will wear it
when you leave?

I see you—
not the version of you
that waits by the door
for love to come back kinder,
but the one who laughs
with her whole body,
the one who makes strangers feel safe,
the one who gives
like she has an endless sky inside her.

He does not know her.

And it is a sacred kind of helplessness
to love someone
you cannot rescue.

So I become a lighthouse.

Not the shore.
Not the boat.
Not the storm.

Just the light.

Constant.
Patient.
Calling you home
without a sound.

And when you finally run—
because one day
you will—

I will not say
“I told you so.”

I will say,

Welcome back.
I kept your seat warm.