Love’s Cost

It starts without asking.
You are somewhere ordinary,
doing what you do,
and then someone matters.

At first it seems like luck.
A voice you wait for.
A place that feels
less provisional than the rest.

You don’t think ahead.
You don’t think of cost.

That comes later.

You begin to arrange things
without noticing.
Time shifts.
What you say, what you keep back,
what you hope will last.

Nothing is demanded outright.
You give it anyway.

There are good days.
More than you expected.
Enough to make it real.

Then the change.
Not sudden.
A thinning.
A space where something held.

You feel it before it’s said.
Or after.
It doesn’t matter which.

What was certain isn’t.
What felt shared
turns out to have edges.

You go on for a while.
People do.

Then one day
you see it clearly.
Not tragic.
Not dramatic.

Just finished.

After that,
everything remains.
The same rooms.
The same light.

Only without the reason
you had for being in them.

You adjust.
You call it that.

But something stays open.
A place that doesn’t close
because it was once used.

You could say
it wasn’t worth it.

People do.

But that isn’t quite right.

For a time
it held.
And you were inside it.

That is what remains.