I was the candle—slow to die,
dripping warmth while you passed by.
Each flicker fed your cold disguise,
your smile a moon behind closed skies.

I poured myself, a quiet stream,
into the vessel of your dream.
While I carved altars from my skin,
you cast your net to pull them in.

Your words were velvet dipped in steel,
a soft deceit I couldn't feel—
not until the silence grew
roots where blossoms never knew.

You held me not with touch, but tether,
a maybe laced in fair-weather.
I danced in rooms I thought were ours,
while you were planting foreign flowers.

You didn’t break me with your no—
it was your wait, your whispered go.
The little looks, the secret sighs,
the way you watched the open skies.

You smiled as though your soul had stayed,
but all the while, you had gently fade.
A ghost still warm, still holding hands,
while building castles in other lands.

And when the truth came crashing in—
not sharp, but slow beneath the skin—
I saw I had been the hook you had laid,
baited bright, then cast away.

Oh, karma walks in bare, soft feet,
but leaves a trail no one can cheat.
She takes her time, she doesn’t shout,
but turns your games inside out.

So when your glass house meets the stone,
and all your masks are overthrown—
remember me, the flame you drained,
the love you used but never named.

Yet I—
I rise from ash and bitter song,
the fire was mine all along.
No longer bait. No longer chained.
A storm unhooked. A soul unfeigned.