After

You stay too long.
That’s always been the thing.
Past the point you’re wanted,
hands still open
like something might still land in them.

Nobody tells you when it’s over.
There’s no sound.
Just a morning
you realise you’ve been talking to a room
that never noticed you were talking.

You gave everything.
Held nothing back.
No version of yourself
set aside for later.
Just trust,
the whole uncut roll of it,
spent like it was renewable.

It wasn’t.

And still,
your hands are already open again,
waiting.
You’d do it the same.
Not because you didn’t learn,
but because
this is how you love.

You give
until the giving
is the only shape you recognise,
and the emptiness that follows
fits too well
to be new.

You see it.
You know what it is.
You know how it ends.

And still
you stay there in it,
the kind of stuck
you only get in dreams.