The heart is red
not because it loves,
but because it remembers.
It remembers the way a name can echo
like a prayer or a curse.
The way touch can feel like home,
or a wound.
The way silence can say
more than a thousand declarations ever could.

Red is not gentle.
It is not safe.
It is the heat of wanting something
you were never meant to hold.
It is the color of holding on too tightly,
and the bruise left behind
when you finally let go.

I have felt red
in the tremble before a first kiss,
and in the stillness after the last goodbye.
In laughter shared beneath stars
that forgot our names,
and in the cold space between
a heartbeat and a response that never came.

Red is the moment you realize
they are not yours,
and never were,
yet somehow
every part of you belonged to them.
It is the ache that arrives uninvited,
on quiet mornings,
on crowded trains,
in songs that once meant nothing
and now mean everything.

Red is the war between loving and leaving.
It is the scream you swallow,
the tears you don’t shed,
the goodbye you say
without moving your lips.

And yet
with all its fury,
all its sorrow,
all its breaking
red is still love.
Even when love is lost.
Even when love is not returned.
Even when it hurts more than it heals.

Because red is proof
that you felt something real.
That your heart
was brave enough
to bleed.
And in that bleeding,
something beautiful lived.
Even if only for a moment.

And maybe,
that moment
was everything.


Erennwrites