Five months is long enough for the first shock of a breakup to fade and nowhere near long enough for the feeling to go. That in-between stretch is where this poem lives. The title, "5 months later," works like a caption or a diary update: something has already ended, and the speaker is writing from the aftermath. We know the writer only by the username lyndsey599, so there is no biography to lean on. Everything that matters is on the page.
The central idea is a standoff between what the speaker knows and what the speaker feels. The knowledge is stated plainly: "i can't keep what doesn't want me and what doesn't want to stay," and "we've said our goodbyes." The feeling refuses to follow: "i loved you then and i love you now." The poem never settles this argument. It just sits inside it, which is what makes it ring true.
The opening shows the speaker's state of mind. "what i thought what could be forever / was simple just a scintilla." The sentence is knotted, with a doubled "what," no punctuation, and "simple" where we might expect "simply." It reads like a thought being corrected as it is spoken. Then comes "scintilla," the most formal word in the poem, meaning a tiny spark or trace. Among such plain, conversational language it glints, and the speaker seems to reach for it because "forever" has to be shrunk to something very small. The lines that follow shrink with it: "a flash of light. / here and gone." Fragments, short lines and full stops imitate the brevity they describe. Yet the next line undercuts the claim. A flash that was truly "gone" would not still be producing poems five months later ("i still write about you"). The poem is the afterimage the flash left behind.
There is no rhyme and no regular meter. This is free verse, and the lack of polish is part of the effect. Instead of sound patterns, the poem builds with repetition. "I still" turns up three times (write, think, love), "i wish" twice, and "i never wanted" twice. Each repeated phrase is a small loop the speaker can't get out of. Punctuation also loosens at a telling moment. Nearly every line ends in a full stop, but "i never wanted to leave" and "i never wanted to have to turn my back on you" run on without one, as if the speaker is rushing to defend themself before anyone can object.
The poem is also honest about its own contradictions. If the other person "doesn't want to stay," it sounds as though the speaker was left. But "i never wanted to leave" and "turn my back on you" suggest the speaker was the one walking away. The poem doesn't say who left, and judging by the text, both may be partly true: a person can be pushed to the door and still be the one who walks through it. The line "sometimes that's just how things have to be" sounds like a consolation the speaker has said to themself often, flat and resigned, without much belief behind it.
The most vulnerable moments are the smallest. "i just wish i held you longer" gives the poem its only physical image, a body-level wish that stands out against all the abstract light and time. Then comes the regret about "yelling at you" instead of saying "i loved you," which tells us the last memory is an argument. The boast that "i don't think anyone will love you as much as me" is wounded pride, but it is also a confession of how much is still invested.
The ending turns on the poem's one "please": "please don't forget about me and everything we used to be." Earlier the speaker looked toward "what could have been," a future that never arrived. Now the phrase is "used to be," firmly in the past. The request also answers the opening image. The speaker called the relationship a flash, here and gone, and now fears becoming one in the other person's memory.
The poem matters because it doesn't dress its feelings up. A single unusual word, a few stubborn repetitions and the shift from clipped lines to rushed ones carry the emotion without rhyme or ornament. Anyone who has kept loving someone after the story ended will recognise the voice.