Keep Choosing yourself

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