Amelia James Poetry

I never stopped loving you.
Not once did I have the choice
to let go of the future
you promised,
the one where you swore we’d be forever.
You talked of marriage,
of proposal plans,
of us,
a life together—
words you planted deep in my chest,
words that felt like truth,
but they were hollow when you walked away.

You told me time and time again
that I was it,
that we were it,
that after everything,
we’d build something that mattered.
But the truth is,
you left that future behind.
You let go of me without a second thought,
and I was left to mourn a love you decided wasn’t worth fighting for.

Each day feels like a funeral
for a life we never had,
a dream I held too tightly
because you told me it was ours.
And now,
I wake to the cold reality
that the love I believed in
was never meant to last—
not for you.
You walked away,
leaving me in the ruins
of a future I believed in
for far too long.

I kept loving you.
In the silences,
in the moments when your promises echoed
louder than any goodbye.
I held onto the “I want to marry you,”
the “After this summer, we’ll be us”—
words that should’ve meant forever.
But they were just echoes,
fading away in the spaces you left behind.

And now I stand here,
with nothing but what-ifs and might-have-beens,
trying to find a place to lay the grief
of all the futures we could have built
if you hadn’t walked away.
The grief of what was promised but never given.
The grief of loving someone
who couldn’t love me the same way.

Every day, I wake up
wondering if you remember
the promises you made.
Do you remember me?
Do you remember the life we planned?
Or have you buried it under the years
and the people who now surround you?

But that’s the thing—
I never got to say goodbye.
I never got to tell you
how deeply your absence is felt,
how every future we dreamed of
is gone,
but I’m still here,
living in the spaces
you left behind,
holding onto a love
that was never truly mine
in the end.

-Amelia James