The blade's edge, a younger ghost,
not life sought, nor a plea for most.
Not death's dark call, though lies might claim,
but love's few faces held a different flame.
Five souls tethered, a fragile thread,
for them, this burning building, I'd instead
stand, and let the slow char begin,
than leap to safety, and let their horror spin.
They see the hurt, but time, they say, will mend.
Yet roots of pain, where do they end?
If need itself, a human core,
becomes the wound that festers evermore?
Why does love, the lauded, wished-for prize,
so often end in tear-stained skies?
One lost to death, the other left to grieve,
a pain I recoil from, I can't believe.
So let me wound myself, they'll call it mad.
Perhaps it is, this path I've sadly had.
The truest gift, a love I'll never find,
no name to whisper, no touch to bind.
Did you see it then, this twisted grace?
Does love still wear the same familiar face?

I know I shouldn’t ache like this, I do,
You were never mine, not in word or vow.
Yet watching you with him, some part withdrew,
Like losing something sacred, even now.

I saw the signs, you turned your gaze away,
Laughed softer, answered slower, broke the thread.
But still I stitched my hope into each day,
Pretending you were paused—not gone, not led.

You never lied. You never called it love.
I wrote those dreams in ink you never touched.
You said “we’re friends,” and I said “close enough,”
While shaking hands betrayed I cared too much.

Now he walks with you where I once would dare,
My silence roars, and still I call it fair.

The moment I started to think I'm incapable of being loved-
Was it when they took what they wanted, unprovoked?
Came too soon,
Was it when I was "a little bundle
of joy"?
Did I learn then, that I was just
a toy?
Was it then, when my father
walked away?
Was that my price to pay
for being born that day?
How could it be-when I did
nothing wrong?
You left without a word,
left me here all along.
Did I learn it before I could even
speak?

Was it when, the man, old
enough to be my grandfather grabbed my hand?
Did my breath hitch, as he whispered those awful words?
I was barely eleven, it didn't make
any sense,
his breath on my skin, the feeling of his fingertips grasping for mine,
as he'd say with a smile, "Our fingers
are making love,"
Was it the first time?
Or just the first time I remembered?

Was it when the stranger
grabbed my *******?
Was it then I was infested?
Did I learn that hands could only take,
not to give?

Did it start all  too soon?

Take me into your arms.
Bury and bathe my mind till the thoughts drown and quiet.
Trap me in the world of you; enclose my mind from the world around us.

Free me of thought.
Hold me, dear. Hold me tight.
Never let go—your grip on my mind, loosen not.

Have I not suffered through young and old?
Have I not let my mind run free,
to build forsaken paths I worry to walk?

Hold my memories. Hold them close.
Care for them as I for you.

How must I beg to be abandoned?
Oh, how I dream to be abandoned
by the parts of me I carried not with love,
but with hatred.

When what built you crumbles you,
your eyes meet hypocrisy,
till driven outside the simplistic gates of sanity.

For here, I am not asking you for your love, nor your time.
I come to ask for neither.

I ask for nothing but my freedom,
which you unwillingly, unknowingly carry—
not a key, nor words,
but a chaste of the mind,
which you force upon me.

My earrings are handmade by hands that don’t love me.
The fingers that bent metal into joyous, beautiful shapes were my own.
But I struggle to love those hands.
I struggle to love the body or mind attached to them too.

I was raised by hands that don’t love me.
Ever since I was small, I’ve known somewhere
that my tiny fingers were only valued
once they grew into working hands.

She languishes in silent grief, feeling unloved by the one to whom she bared her heart's every tenderness.