

You loved me gently.
That was the hardest part.
No villain to point at,
no sharp betrayal, just your hands learning
the geography of my storms while I secretly searched maps
to somewhere sunnier. So you took pieces of us
and fed them to your hunger.
Canceled futures quietly. Stopped reaching first.
Turned silence into a language you had to translate alone.
Keep calling selfishness “finally choosing myself,” as if the wreckage behind me
doesn’t still carry your name.
You wanted happiness like a fire wants air
greedy, consuming, certain it deserved more sky
Now your absence
sits beside me
like an unpaid debt.
Because getting what you want
doesn’t erase what it cost someone else.
You
thought
happiness would feel cleaner than this.
But some joys arrive with blood under their fingernails.
Keep calling selfishness “finally choosing myself,” as if the wreckage behind me
doesn’t still carry your name.
You wanted happiness
like a fire wants air greedy,
consuming, certain it deserved more sky