Not Quite

if it stays it is love
if it ends it is a love story
and if it never begins it is poetry

but you, my love
you stayed only to leave
what we had ended
and crueler still
it ended before it truly began

so what does that make us
not quite love
not quite a story
not even something that was never meant to be

perhaps we are something far more tragic
a story written in fragments
a beginning without a middle
an ending that arrived too soon
a love that lingered just long enough to be felt deeply
but never long enough to be lived

and yet
you only are left to me
you are real