# I'm Leaving Because I Love You I'm leaving because I love you. Not because I've stopped, or because the well has run dry—but because love, true love, is a hand that must sometimes open. I'm leaving because you deserve more than the small room of my certainty, more than the narrow window through which I've always looked. You deserve the whole sky. I'm leaving because staying would be a slow theft— taking from you, day by day, the person you might become without the weight of my wanting. I'm leaving because I know now that love isn't a cage dressed as a home, isn't fingers locked around a wrist while calling it devotion. It's knowing when to let go. I'm leaving because the truest thing I can give you is distance— the space where you'll discover you are enough without me, that your light doesn't need my darkness to burn bright. I'm leaving because I love you the way autumn loves the trees— not by holding on, but by releasing, by making beauty out of the letting go. And if you find your way back to me, if the road circles round again, it will be because you chose it, not because you couldn't escape. That's when I'll know I loved you right.

I'm leaving because I love you...
I'm leaving because you never understood me.
Tears spill over my eyes...
I don't want them to. But I cannot stop them!

I loved you wildly, tenderly!
In you, I found my entire world.
You were my happiness, my hope,
you flooded my life with light!

I'm leaving because I know already
that I cannot make you happy!
I won't hurt you—
I won't be the stone in your path!

When I leave you,
I'll leave only a small mark,
the ghost of a beautiful summer,
and the ache of everything slipping away!

Sometimes I'll drift into your dreams,
to whisper of our love,
because we were so close,
but life proved far more cruel.

You'll remember those brief moments,
you'll miss the girl with broken dreams,
the one who abandoned even herself
just to be happy with you!

When sorrow finds you,
read my verses then.
In them you'll see, you'll understand,
how deeply you mattered to me!

There will come a day
when we recall our dreams,
when we grieve the love we murdered
with harsh words, with pride, with lies!

I'm leaving because I love you...
I won't wound you with anything!
You will remain for me—
my dream that never came true!

I'm leaving because I love you...