If I were to die tomorrow, Tell her I didn’t leave because of her. Tell her I didn’t walk away because she wasn’t enough because she was too much because she asked for more than I could give. Tell her the truth: I left because the war finally caught up to me… even after I outran it for years like it was a debt collector and I was still fast enough to stay free. Tell her I tried to outwork it. Outlift it. Outthink it. Out-discipline it. I tried to bury it under schedules and silence and the illusion of “I’m fine.” But it doesn’t die that way. It just waits. It waits until life gets quiet. Until love gets real. Until someone finally gets close enough to touch the part of you that you keep locked down because you don’t trust yourself with it. Tell her I wanted to stay. Not the easy kind of stay not the stay that happens when everything is light and laughter is effortless and the future doesn’t feel heavy. Tell her I wanted the hard stay. The stay that means committing even when my mind turned into a battlefield again. The stay that means choosing her even when I didn’t know how to choose myself. Tell her that every breath I ever fought for after combat every morning I woke up when my body begged me not to I fought it to stay near her. Because being near her felt like a ceasefire. Not perfect. Not painless. But possible. Tell her my silence was never a lack of love. It was never “I don’t care.” It was never “You don’t matter.” It was “I don’t know how to speak without bleeding everywhere.” It was the only armor I had left. And I know what silence looks like from the outside cold, indifferent, absent but from the inside, it was restraint. It was me trying not to let the darkness spill onto her. It was me gripping the edge of myself so I didn’t drown her in what I carry. Tell her I was trying. Every goddamn day. Not with poetry. Not with promises. With effort. With staying alive. With fighting the things that come for a man at night. With learning how to be soft without feeling like I was losing my spine. Tell her I was trying to become a man worthy of her trust. Not a man who needed her as medicine but a man who could love her clean. Tell her to write. To scream into paper if she has to. To cry until her chest stops aching. To create like her life depends on it because sometimes it does. Tell her nothing she feels is wrong. Not the rage. Not the grief. Not the confusion. Not the days she hates me. Not the days she misses me so much it feels like punishment. Tell her that love can hurt and still be real. Tell her healing is not betrayal. Healing is not “moving on too fast.” Healing is not disrespect. Healing is not forgetting. Healing is survival. It’s what the heart does when it refuses to die just because something ended. Tell her I saw the stars in her eyes and that was enough light to last a thousand dark nights. Because in a world full of noise, her light was quiet. Steady. It didn’t burn me. It didn’t demand. It didn’t perform. It just existed. And it made me want to exist too. Tell her I didn’t give up. I just got tired. Tired in a way sleep can’t fix. Tired in a way that doesn’t show on the outside the kind that lives in the bones. Tired of fighting my own mind. Tired of feeling like I was failing someone I loved more than I knew how to explain. Tell her she saved me. Again and again. Not by rescuing me. Not by fixing me. By staying soft in a world that taught me only steel. By seeing the man under the armor and not flinching. Even when I couldn’t say it even when I couldn’t show it the right way she mattered. She was medicine I didn’t know how to take. Tell her she was never a burden. She was my reason. She was the proof that I could still feel. The proof that I wasn’t just a machine built to endure. She was the reason I tried to become better instead of just becoming colder. Tell her to forgive me. Not because I deserve it but because she deserves peace. Because carrying anger forever is still letting the war win. Tell her to never forget me. Not as a wound. Not as a regret. But as a chapter that meant something. As a love that was real even when it was imperfect. But more than that Tell her to live. Tell her to keep going even when it feels like betrayal to smile again. Even when joy feels unfamiliar. Even when the world feels too loud for a heart that’s been through too much. Tell her to build a life so full that the pain has nowhere left to sit. Tell her I’m proud. Proud of her strength. Proud of her softness. Proud of the way she fights for herself even when she’s exhausted. Proud of who she is even when she doesn’t feel like enough. Tell her… Always.