I hope one day you realize
you were the first to break me clean,
not with rage, but with retreat
and no one else will ever do it
with such quiet precision.
I never handed this power
to fickle boys with borrowed hearts.
Only you were given the fragile pulse
I guarded too long,
beating too loudly for its own skin.
You were the mirror of all
I’d never become
flawless in your stillness,
while I spilled,
too loud, too much,
never enough.
You were easy to adore,
impossible to hold,
and I still choke on the truth
what we had has fossilized,
a relic in a corner of memory,
gathering dust
where love once lived.
It’s a lump I can’t swallow,
nor spit from my throat.
And sometimes I wish you'd say it
say I mean nothing,
just so I could begin
a lifetime of learning to hate you.
I repeat—learning
because I never could.
You’ve already threaded yourself
through the veins of my memory.
Stitched between breaths,
haunting every quiet.
Let me remind you,
in case you forgot
life is a cruel sculptor,
and I was clay in your hands.
You never saw me.
You saw the echo of dreams
you wished I could become.
But never me
the raw, trembling girl
who kept loving you
in secret, in storm.
You mastered the art
of giving just enough
breadcrumbs of affection
to keep me starved
and tethered.
You made me feel
unlovable,
when really,
you simply didn’t want
to love me.
You gave me drought
and made me forget
I was the sea.
I wondered,
had you ever been loved
as a child?
Or did it drown you, too?
Your smile—rare,
and never for me
hid stories I was never meant
to know.
A mystery,
never solved.
You punished me
with silences sharp as glass,
with looks that struck
like verdicts,
as if love was a crime
I kept committing,
knowing the sentence.
You gave me secrets,
and I grew my hair long
to veil the ones I carried.
You gave me wounds,
and I wore them like heirlooms
shining in places
you never looked.
Still,
I always wondered
what scars did you hide
beneath that practiced stillness?
Outstanding poem
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