she stole a ring
& called it forever.
i said yes
because i wanted
to believe her.

i carried us—
the bills, the food,
the fights.
she carried
nothing
but the matches
she used
to burn me.

she made me leave love
then punished me
for trying to find it again.

& still—
she gets the happy ending.
& i get
the trauma.

but i know now:

love doesn’t
ask you to bleed
& call it
home.

love
shouldn’t ignore no
& rewrite your skin
without permission.

i was 14
& still learning
how to say
yes
to myself.

i didn’t know
how to say no
with a body
that wasn’t even
mine yet.

backseat.
backdoor.
back then.

i bled
& said nothing.

but now—
i speak.

i am not
what he did to me.
i am what i chose
after.

Demons in my orbit, they don’t let me breathe,
Every time I try to leave, they follow underneath.
I swear I never meant to let you down,
But the silence in my room is the loudest sound.

Am I all I ever might be? A shadow in the screen,
Static in the signal, lost somewhere between.
I swear I tried, I swear I cared,
But every time I reach, there’s nothing there.

So I sit and watch the planets spin,
A ghost beneath my own skin.

I carried you when you had nothing,
gave without question, without limit.
I made excuses for your weight on my shoulders,
called it love, called it patience.

You needed me then.
You don’t need me now.
Not because you grew on your own,
but because someone else is reaping
the lessons I bled to teach you.

You are everything I asked you to be,
just not for me.

You moved on like love was a door
you could walk through without looking back.
I am still standing in the wreckage,
hands full of everything I gave you,
everything you never gave back.

He gets the version of you I begged for.
He gets the love I built from nothing.
And I get the ghosts—
the doubt, the trust issues,
the aching silence where I used to be whole.

You made me forget myself.
Now I don’t know how to be anything
but broken.

I spent months stitching up silence,
learning the shape of a world without you,
teaching my hands not to reach,
my heart not to hope.

Then suddenly—
your names lit up my screen,
familiar and distant all at once,
pulling me back to a door
I thought was locked for good.

My heart stuttered, tripped on old wounds,
on the words I can’t take back,
on the echoes of my own cruelty
that I fear you still hear.

I’ve whispered sorry a thousand times
into empty rooms,
but no matter how much I kneel before the past,
it won’t rewrite itself.

So why am I smiling?
Why does hope slip through the cracks
like light I wasn’t expecting?
I should be fine without you.
I was learning to be fine.

But here you are—
and I don’t know how to hold this,
don’t know how to let myself have this,
don’t know if I deserve to.

And still, I want to.

I trace the blade like a promise,
carve my pain into skin—
maybe if I break enough,
you’ll remember how to hold me.

Maybe if I bleed,
you’ll come back,
just to see
if there’s anything left to save.