a road i would have taken, a love i couldn’t hold | poem
i never asked for forever,
but i would have chased it for you.
i would have left the porch light burning,
stepped off the map,
my feet kissing asphalt
like it always knew what i’d do.
i would have learned to live out of suitcases,
to call motel rooms “ours",
to find constellations in cracked ceilings,
love songs in stars.
i would have left the house my father built.
the oak frame, the inheritance,
the orchard with its rows of apple trees
and grief blooming in between.
i would have locked the door behind me,
thrown the key into the river,
never looked back,
never let them follow me.
i would have stolen hours for us.
snuck out past midnight,
barefoot and breathless,
my palms pressed to the dash
as you sped through red lights
like they lit the way just for us.
we would’ve been ghosts on backroads,
eating gas station candy,
naming every moon we passed.
singing with the windows down,
laughing like we’d never crash.
i would’ve kissed you in parking lots
with no one watching but the sky.
i would’ve gone anywhere,
chased you through
cities, clouds, and sea.
so long as you kept driving,
so long as you kept choosing me.
i used to dream of children
with careful hands,
and a kitchen warm with routine —
coffee before sunrise,
the same table, the same chair,
the same story again and again.
but for you,
i would have folded my certainties
into your suitcase,
and traded stillness for fire and pursuit.
i would have followed you into the forest,
into cities that never knew my name,
where we wrote our initials on foggy
mirrors
and pretended the future
was just another motel breakfast away.
you wanted a life without fences.
no landlords, no clocks, no shoes.
just open windows, loud music,
and nothing left to lose.
and i would have come,
laughing and undone,
breaking every rule too.
i would have lived and loved
in the mess of you.
the unfinished thoughts,
the mismatched socks,
the way you never unpacked all the way.
i would have learned to hold you
without holding you back.
loved you enough to let you leave
and still wait at every bus stop,
every threshold,
every end of the road.
i would have let the roof leak
if it meant hearing your laughter
through the rain.
i would have let the garden die,
let the floorboards crack,
if it meant you’d sit beside me on the floor
with paint-stained jeans
and that look in your eyes
like love was something you could
survive this time.
i would have let the family
stop asking when i’d settle down,
where i’d be found.
i would have stopped asking too.
i would have lived in the silence,
slept in the hush between
almost and you.
so believe me when i say —
if you had asked me,
if you had turned around,
even just once,
i would have followed you.
yes, i would have.
not because i was lost or alone,
but because you were the only one
that ever made me feel like
running could still lead me
home.