You Say Love is a Temple

There are parts of me I’ve lost to love.
Not in the way one might think—not in grand moments, but in the quiet, aching sacrifices. The bending of my own will, the softening of edges, the surrendering of time and spirit to something that never fully returned.

I remember waiting.Not for a call, not for an invitation—but simply for the recognition of all I’d already given. Hours, days, weeks spent in a kind of stillness, hoping that if I gave enough, if I made myself patient enough, if I stretched myself just a little thinner, it would be enough.

I gave up time that could have been mine to fill the gaps for someone who couldn’t even notice the way my hands shook from the waiting. I sacrificed pieces of my own peace to soothe someone else’s chaos. I gave my heart away, little by little, in the hope that maybe, just maybe, it would be enough to fill the emptiness I saw in someone else.

And then there were the silences—the quiet surrender to a life that didn’t feel like mine. I had moments of feeling like a shadow, my own voice swallowed by the weight of what I gave, only to be left empty-handed.

I made myself small for love.I let pieces of myself disappear, hoping that my absence would create room for something else to be seen. I wore my heart like a ribbon, delicate and fragile, hoping someone would wrap it around their wrist and wear it close. But it was always easier to give, easier to bend, easier to sacrifice than it was to ask for what I needed.

I think of the nights I stayed awake, the quiet ache of knowing I was the one waiting, while someone else moved through the world with no idea of how much I gave. I think of the times I gave up what I wanted, what I needed, for the sake of something I thought could be saved. I think of the way I lost myself in the pursuit of someone else’s love—losing my own laughter, my own voice, my own fire—believing that sacrifice was the price of being worthy of love.

And I wonder now, in the quiet ache of what remains:
Does love always ask for this?
Does it always require pieces of me, unseen and unnoticed, until there’s nothing left but the memory of who I was before it took everything?