We underestimate how close hate is to love.
I was high on the idea of someone wanting me.
Even if love had two faces,
even if it hurt and twisted parts of me that I swore untouchable.

You built walls and called it a home.
But at night I’m a refugee in a place that made me feel like I’d never belong.
I’m still waiting for permission to exist in a place that once claimed to be “mine”.

You took possession of my heart and called it passion.
You’d say I’d never get anything better.
This is what I deserved.
This was love.
And love was enough,
someone without a heart might say.

You carved your name into places no one could see.
Left scars in parts of my body
that would never feel fully mine anymore.
My skin remembers every memory my mind tried so desperately to forget.
I’m a ghost in a body that forgot how to survive.

I knew I had to leave when I realized that love shouldn’t have meant abandoning who I was before you.
It shouldn’t have been accepting your mistreatment
and calling it presence.

But I’m not bitter anymore.
Because my love in you was permanent.
And people will ask about us to you.
And you’ll remember the heart you lost,
the only one you really ever had.
But when they ask me?
I’ll remember someone who taught me what love wasn’t.