there is a peace in solitude
that no crowded room can give
a silence that doesn’t ask questions
a calm that lets me live

i move through my day untouched
unjudged
unexplained
i rise when i rise
i heal without shame

no tug-of-war between who i am
and who they want me to be
no need to shrink for comfort
no mirror distorting me

and yet
beneath the quiet
there’s a pulse i didn’t plant
a hunger not from loneliness
but something older
blunt
blunt and honest as a heartbeat
thudding in the dark
the ache of skin that still remembers
what it felt like to be held

it’s not desperation
it’s design
biology still hums a song
my soul no longer sings
and some nights i almost forget
how much it cost
to crave the wrong hands
and call it love

but i remember

i remember the contortions
the self-abandonment
the thousand compromises made
just to feel warm
for a moment too brief
to be worth the aftermath

so i breathe
i sit with the ache
without feeding it lies
i remind my body
We are safe now

not untouched
but whole

and if love comes again
it must match the peace
i fought so long to claim
it must add to the silence
not shatter it

until then
i kiss my own shoulders
i wrap myself in rest
i turn longing into a language
that speaks to the stars
instead of empty arms

this is how i overcome
not by killing the craving
but by teaching it patience
by tending the garden within
so thoroughly
that nothing external
feels like survival

solitude, after all
isn’t absence
it is presence
pure and full

and when the right love comes
it will not compete with that
it will bow to it
or pass