I lick the cruelty off your lips
and say thank you.

I kept thinking you’d soften
if I stayed quiet enough,
if I showed you what gentleness and love looked like,
that you might try it on.

But you never changed.
You never even blinked.
And I kept bleeding
thinking it was part of love.

I wanted you to be better.
Not for me-
but for you.
But wanting didn’t make you kind.
It only made me blind.

You didn’t hurt me by accident.
That’s just who you are.
And I’ve spent too long
writing apologies in my own pain
for expecting more.

So I’ll stop pretending
there’s a softer version of you
waiting just around the corner,
just to make things a little easier.

I loved a ghost
stitched from soft words
and glances that meant nothing.
I touched a dream
and swore it had a pulse.
And now I grieve
not you-
but the person I thought you were.

I don’t know how to exist
unless I’m unraveling for someone else.
My worth hangs in your comfort
quiet, cruel, conditional.

I make myself small in a sacred way
bite the tongue,
bleed behind the curtain,
so no one sees the cost of your peace,
or your character.

I’m not a person in this.
I’m the silence that makes your voice sound softer.
I’m the bruise you cover
so you can look whole.

I used to think bleeding made me worthy.
That if I burned slow enough,
someone might finally call it love….
But it’s not love.

It’s a quiet execution.

I give, and give,
and they call it devotion,
but no one ever asks why I never stop.

I twist myself into prayers,
crawl into their peace like a grave,
and call it my purpose.
But I’m tired of being a vessel for someone else’s softness.
Tired of being holy only when I am hollow.

They sleep soundly while I splinter,
and I tell myself it means I matter.
But I don’t feel holy.
I feel used.

Your words were small,
but they split me open-
quiet knives
dressed as truth.

I carried your words
like glass under skin-
invisible,
but cutting every time I moved.

Every syllable,
a small death I swallowed
just to stay close.

I bled in silence
so you wouldn’t hear
what you’d done.

I’ve never healed right
from the sound
of your voice
telling me
I wasn’t enough.

You hurt me with hands that once healed,
and still, I kiss the wounds you leave behind.

You are my poison and my prayer.
A god I can’t stop kneeling for,
even as the altar crumbles under me.

We are saints of suffering,
bound not by grace,
but by the echo of every scream we swallowed,
just to stay.


The silence.
The sweetness that comes too late
and still tastes like heaven.
I know the cage,
and I decorate it in your name.
Call it temple.
Call it home.

You say you love me
in the same breath that cuts me.
And I believe you.
Not because it’s true,
but because it has to be.
Because if it isn’t,
then what am I left with
but ruin?