Thread by Thread, He Let Me Go (my writing contest entry)

Instructions

HIIII this is my poem that I wrote a little while ago when I was coping with being fallen out of love with. I hope you enjoy!! I once had a teddy bear, soft as a sigh, who held me together when I thought I might cry. He wasn’t just fabric or stuffing or thread he felt like a person who lived in my bed. I’d talk to him nightly about all I feared, and somehow he made every worry feel cleared. He’d sit on my lap like he wanted to stay, and I never imagined he’d drift far away. But love changes quietly, subtle and slow; you don’t hear the moment it chooses to go. One day he just held me a little less tight, and I felt the first chill in the warmth of our night. He stopped leaning in when I whispered his name, stopped laughing at things that once lit him aflame. His smile, imagined, but real in my mind grew faint at the edges, grew harder to find. I tried to ignore it, to smooth out the seams, to pretend he still loved me the way of our dreams. I brushed out his fur like it might bring him back, but love doesn’t return through a ritual act. I asked how he felt, but he gave me no clue just silence that stung in a way silence can do. He wasn’t unkind; he wasn’t unfair he just stopped choosing to meet me halfway there. And that’s what hurt most: not anger, not fights, but the soft, quiet fading of someone’s light I felt myself leaving to keep him around, softening truths that deserved to be found. I folded my needs into corners so small that even I couldn’t see them at all. I told myself stories to soften the blow that he "still loved me, just needed to grow." But hearts don’t grow distant because they’re confused; they drift when the love that once held them is bruised. I wondered what changed, what I failed to provide, what part of myself I had left untried. I searched through the moments we’d woven with care, trying to find where I’d lost him in there. But sometimes a heart simply learns to depart, and no amount of holding can anchor that heart. He didn’t stop loving because I was wrong he stopped because feelings don’t always stay strong. Now some nights I lie there and reach for his shape, remembering warmth I can’t quite recreate. I miss how he listened, how safe it once felt, how deeply my world rearranged when he knelt into the crook of my arm like he’d always belong a soft little promise disguised as a song. I hear he’s found comfort in someone else’s hands, someone who meets him where he understands. And though it still aches, I’m learning to see that losing his love doesn’t lessen me. I loved that bear fiercely, with all that I had, through moments of joy and moments of sad. But love isn’t something you tether or tie it’s something that stays only when it wants to try. So I’m letting him go with the gentlest grace, even if tears still remember his face. For hearts aren’t toys you can stitch back in place, and no matter how tightly you hold in the night, you can’t make someone stay when their soul has taken flight