GNHPoemReview: “The Weight of Goodbye” — Opeyemi Ibitola on Love, Silence, and Letting Go

Some heartbreaks don’t explode in public fights or dramatic farewells. They just… fade. A quiet drifting apart, the slow swell of silence until love feels like a stranger sitting across from you. In an era where people post “couple goals” on Instagram while secretly battling loneliness, Opeyemi Ibitola’s The Weight of Goodbye hits like a mirror we didn’t ask to look into.

This poem isn’t about betrayal or infidelity; it’s about something far more common today—love that dies because no one speaks, no one fights, no one listens.

The Weight of Goodbye

by Opeyemi Ibitola

We felt it,
the truth humming beneath our ribs,
yet fear stitched our hands together.
We clung to love
as if it alone could mend the cracks,
but silence swelled,
a river widening between us.
Our bond thinned,
hope shrinking into the dream
of waking in a home unbroken.

Then came the weight,
relentless, pressing every word.
I bent, I bent until my voice splintered,
but you stood unmoved.
What worth is love
that will not speak for me,
fight for me,
or bear the quarrels it creates?
So it ended,
not with thunder, not with mercy,
but with a quiet door closing
on promises once tender.

Still, I cradle the remnants:
the safety of your voice,
the fragile trust,
the rare belonging.
I only wish the goodbye
was lighter on the tongue,
that we might have remained as friends.
Yet if the path is mine again,
if the stars decree it,
destiny will gather us once more
where love learns to listen.

This poem stings because it’s too real. We’ve all seen relationships that die not from fire but from frost, the unanswered texts, the conversations avoided, the arguments swallowed until the silence becomes unbearable.

Opeyemi Ibitola captures this ache in lines like “a river widening between us” and “not with thunder, not with mercy, but with a quiet door closing.” That’s the heartbreak most people face today: not a stormy ending, but a slow suffocation.

What makes this piece powerful is its raw honesty. It doesn’t glamorise heartbreak, but it also doesn’t drown in bitterness. Instead, it whispers what so many secretly feel: I wish the goodbye was lighter, I wish we stayed friends, I still believe in love, maybe destiny will be kind next time.

It’s tender, painful, and beautifully human, the kind of poem you’ll screenshot, share, and read again when the night feels too heavy.

Opeyemi Ibitola is a Geology student at Federal University, Oye-Ekiti who finds escape in poetry and prose.
She writes about love, heartbreak, and the quiet truths we often leave unspoken.
Her words reflect a search for meaning in struggles and the beauty that lingers even in goodbye.