and then it was dark.

I used to wake up 

with the sun 

Then you moved in  

with your blackout curtains 

(I used to wake up with the sun. There was something natural about it. Light came in, and I rose with it. I didn’t think much about it then. It was simply the way I lived. Then you moved in with your blackout curtains.

This is about how quietly another person can change the atmosphere of your life. Sometimes it happens through things so small that you don’t recognize them as change at all. The curtains went up. The light disappeared and I adjusted. I think that’s what stays with me most. How easily I adjusted.

My daily rituals were small, but they were mine. The way I woke up. The light I let into the room. The pace of my mornings. The little things I did without thinking because they had always belonged to me. Those rituals made up my days, and my days made up my life. In ways I didn’t understand then, they also made up me.

Little by little, your way of living became ours, and then somehow became mine. Things that once felt natural to me became harder to remember. My rhythms changed. My surroundings changed. I changed. That is what the blackout curtains came to represent for me. Not just darkness, but the quiet loss of the small things that once made me feel like myself.)

---

chosen.

I needed you to love me 

because then 

maybe 

I could love me too 

(There was a time when I needed someone else’s love to tell me something I didn’t know how to tell myself. If you loved me, then maybe I was worth loving. If you chose me, maybe there was something in me worth choosing. Your affection became evidence I could hold up against every doubt I had about myself.

I didn’t realize how much power I was giving away. I was asking another person to introduce me to my own worth. I thought that if I could see myself through loving eyes, eventually I might learn to look at myself the same way. That’s what the “maybe” means to me. There was still uncertainty. Even your love couldn’t guarantee that I would love myself. But I hoped it could show me how.

I know now that being loved by someone else and loving myself are two different things. No amount of being chosen could do the work of choosing myself.)

---

I should have kept myself.

You opened me up. 

You stepped inside of me. 

And I mistook  

being entered  

for being known. 

(There was a time when I thought letting someone close meant they knew me. I opened parts of myself I had kept protected. My body, my thoughts, my fears, my past. I let someone come close enough to see things that felt private and vulnerable, and I assumed that kind of closeness must mean understanding. But being allowed inside someone is not the same as knowing them.

A person can touch the most intimate parts of you and still never understand who you are. They can know your body, your habits, your wounds, even the things you are afraid to say out loud, and still not truly see you. That is what this poem means to me. I confused access with intimacy. I thought because I had opened myself completely, I had finally been known completely. I understand now that being exposed and being seen are not the same thing.)

---

bottomless.

I could grow a garden 

to feed you for a lifetime 

But I didn’t know 

you were starving 

(There was a time when I believed that if I loved someone well enough, I could make them feel full. I could be patient. I could be generous. I could give my time, my body, my understanding. I could keep tending to the relationship, keep planting, keep growing, keep offering more.

That is what the garden means to me. It’s everything I was willing to cultivate for someone I loved. But I didn’t understand that some hunger has nothing to do with what another person is giving you. I thought if they were still reaching, I simply had not given enough yet. I didn’t realize they could be starving in a way I could never feed.

There is something painful about understanding that now. I could have grown an entire garden for someone and still watched them ask for more.

That kind of hunger was never mine to satisfy.)

---

i put myself to sleep.

It felt like you might swallow me whole 

with each deep thrust of your tongue 

I closed my eyes 

so you wouldn’t consume me 

to ignore what the body knows 

(There were moments when being wanted felt too much like being consumed. That’s what I mean when I say it felt like you might swallow me whole. Your hunger felt larger than me, and instead of feeling closer to you, I felt myself disappearing.

So I closed my eyes. I wasn’t lost in the moment. I was trying to leave it.

I think the body knows before the mind is ready to admit anything. It tightens. It goes quiet. It finds somewhere else to go. I learned how to become still inside myself, how to make distance where there was none. I didn’t know how to say that something in me wanted to disappear, so I closed my eyes and ignored what my body already understood.)

---

hot water and wine.

I let so much of myself  

get away from me. 

As we came together  

with a meaningless fulfillment the body had at the time. 

A distraction. 

I felt so small 

when you said goodnight 

and closed the door. 

(I was infatuated with someone at work in a much higher position than me. That alone created an imbalance I didn’t fully understand at the time. I admired him. I wanted his attention. I wanted to feel chosen by him.

So when we came together, part of me mistook the closeness for something larger than it was. My body could experience a moment of fulfillment while the rest of me was still searching for meaning inside it. For a little while, desire became a distraction. It gave me somewhere to disappear. But afterward, there was nowhere left to hide.

I remember how small I felt when you said goodnight and closed the door. How quickly something that had felt consuming became ordinary to you. I was left alone with everything I had attached to it. The shame came quietly. I didn’t believe there was something shameful about wanting you, but I could feel how much of myself I had handed over just to experience a moment of being wanted back.

You had the position. The distance. The ability to close the door and return to your life. I was the one standing on the other side of it, trying to gather myself. That is what I mean when I say I let so much of myself get away from me. For a moment, our bodies came together. Afterward, I felt farther away from myself than I had ever before.)

---

I beg, I plead.

You want me to unconditionally love 

all of your bad habits 

yet you persecute me  

for mine 

(You wanted me to love you without conditions. Your flaws, your habits, the parts of you that hurt me, the things you were still unwilling to change. You wanted patience for all of it. Understanding. Grace. Room to be human. And I gave you so much of that. But when it came to me, there was very little room.

My mistakes became evidence. My flaws became something to point at. The things you asked me to forgive in you became unacceptable when they appeared in me. I was expected to love you in your entirety while constantly being reminded of everything in me that needed fixing. There is something deeply lonely about being asked to offer a kind of love you are never allowed to receive. I kept making space for your humanity while feeling ashamed of my own. You sucked for that.)

---

without.

I was always falling 
I just mistook 
your hands 
for somewhere to land 

(I think I was falling long before I knew to call it that. There was always some part of me reaching. For certainty. For warmth. For somewhere to put all the fear I didn’t know how to carry. Then there were your hands. I thought they meant I had arrived. I thought if you held me closely enough, the falling would stop. For a while, I let myself believe that. Maybe that is what longing does. It gives ordinary things too much meaning. A hand becomes a promise. A body becomes shelter. A person becomes a place.

I didn’t know I was still falling. I only knew you were not there when I reached out.)

---

dim.

I looked through your eyes

for so long

I forgot what color mine were

(For a long time, I saw myself through you. Your attention made me feel beautiful. Your distance made me question myself. Your moods, your opinions, the way you looked at me became mirrors I trusted more than my own reflection. I spent so much time wondering what you saw that I stopped asking what I saw. That is what I mean when I say I forgot the color of my own eyes. I lost familiarity with myself. I became so accustomed to looking outward for reassurance, approval, and meaning that I stopped becoming anyone apart from you.

I knew how to read your face. I had forgotten how to recognize mine.)

---

borrowed faces.

You would wear my face 

and seduce others with it 

(There were parts of me you learned so well that sometimes it felt like you carried them away with you. The way I loved. The things I said. My softness. My humor. The parts of me I thought mattered because they were mine. Then I watched pieces of myself show up somewhere else. That is what I mean when I say you would wear my face.

What unsettled me most was wondering if this had happened before me too. I started to question how much of you I had really known, and how much of you had been shaped by the people who came before me. A phrase. A way of touching. A way of knowing exactly what to say. It made me wonder how often I thought I was meeting you, when really I was meeting pieces of everyone you had loved before me.)

---

at arm’s length.

You must not have loved yourself 

because I mirrored  

everything you did 

and became everything you claimed to love 

(For a long time, I paid attention to what you loved. The way you spoke. The things you admired. What made you feel understood. What made you feel comfortable. Without realizing it, I began reflecting those things back to you. I became softer where you wanted softness. More understanding where you needed understanding. I learned how to meet you in the places you seemed to need someone most.

And somehow, it still wasn’t enough.

I became so much of what you said you wanted that eventually I had to wonder if what you rejected in me was something you had already rejected in yourself. Maybe that is why the mirror became so uncomfortable.

I was reflecting back pieces of you, and somewhere in that reflection, I disappeared.)

---

the witness.

I was a witness to your life 

you didn’t know I had one. 

Perhaps, I didn’t at the time. 

(I spent so much time watching your life happen. Your moods. Your plans. Your pain. Your needs. Your dreams. I knew what mattered to you because I was always paying attention. But somewhere in all of that, my life became quieter.

You didn’t seem to notice that I had needs, desires, plans, or an inner world of my own. And the difficult part for me to admit is that, for a while, neither did I. I had become so involved in witnessing your life that I stopped participating fully in mine. I was present for you in ways I had stopped being present for myself. Maybe you didn’t know I had a life because I had slowly stopped living one that belonged entirely to me.)

---

retreat.

And when I feel small 

I start to look for you 

to make you see 

what you did to me 

What I allowed 

(“What I allowed” is the harder part for me to sit with.

There were things you did that hurt me, but there were also times I knew something was wrong and stayed anyway. I questioned myself. I explained things away. I forgave before I had even finished hurting. I wanted you to see what you had done to me. I thought if you finally understood the damage, maybe something inside me would settle. Maybe I wanted you to acknowledge it so I could stop questioning myself. The ways I went against my own knowing. The things I accepted because I was afraid to lose you. The times I made myself smaller just to keep the connection.

That is why I look for you when I feel small. Some part of me still wants you to understand. But I am learning that I can understand what happened to me, even if you never do.)

---

stories.

Why did it take me so many years 

to understand 

your silence  

was never empty 

because I kept filling it in 

(For years, I treated your silence like something I needed to solve. If you pulled away, I looked for reasons. If you didn’t explain yourself, I explained you to myself. I filled in the gaps with hope, patience, excuses, and whatever meaning made it easier to stay.

That is what I mean when I say your silence was never empty. I kept putting things inside it. I told myself you were overwhelmed, tired, worried, or having a hard time. I gave your silence a whole world inside it. I filled it with everything you refused to say.

It took me a long time to understand that not every unanswered thing needs to be translated. Sometimes silence is just silence. And that is also an answer.

The hardest part was realizing how much of the story I had been writing by myself. I don’t have to finish it anymore. I can close the book and leave the empty pages with you.)

---

let go. stay.

I asked you to loosen your grip 

from around my neck 

not to leave 

I wasn’t asking you to leave. And perhaps, I should have. I was asking you to stop making love feel like something I had to survive. There was so little room for me to just be. Everything felt like it could become a problem, so I learned to watch myself closely. I still loved you. I still wanted the relationship. I wasn’t asking to be abandoned. 

I just wanted it to feel safe enough that I could breathe inside it.

---

withholding.

I never knew 

I was beautiful 

you were careful 

not to tell me 

(Sometimes what someone withholds can become just as powerful as what they say. It took me a long time to realize that your silence was never proof that I wasn’t beautiful. It only meant I had been looking to you to tell me something I needed to learn for myself.)

---

stains.

You liked the way I cried 

you traced the stains  

left behind 

with your fingers 

My tears 

an offering 

I wanted you so badly that even my pain became something I could hand you. You watched me cry, touched the evidence of it, and I mistook that closeness for being held. I regret how willingly I gave you my pain, even the parts of me that should have belonged only to me. That is what I mean by “an offering.”

I was so afraid of losing you that I began placing my pain at your feet, hoping even that might be enough to make you stay.

---

raw.

You stained my skin 

with your words, 

your hands. 

With every bath, 

I was removing myself  

with you. 

(There were things you said and did that stayed with me long after the moment was over. I carried them in my body, in the way I saw myself, in the way I moved through the day. It felt like you had left something on me that would not come off.

I wanted to feel clean again. Of your words. Your touch. The version of myself I had become while loving you. But somewhere in trying to remove you, I started removing pieces of myself too. I didn’t know how to separate what belonged to you from what still belonged to me.

I thought I was washing you away. I didn’t realize how much of myself was going with you.)

---

in your shadow.

I can’t see my face 

behind yours. 

For a long time, you took up so much space in my mind that I stopped seeing myself clearly. Your feelings came first, your needs, your reactions. and your version of things. I became so focused on understanding you that I lost sight of the person standing behind all of it.

Me.

---

feel.

I moved in and out  

of realities 

I created for us 

I knew which one was real  

by how much pain  

I was in 

(There were times when I lived more inside what I hoped we were than what we actually were. I could take a good day, a moment, a promise, and build an entire version of us around it. In that version, things made sense. We loved each other. We were going to be okay. Everything painful had an explanation. Then something would happen and I would be pulled back into what was real.)

---

apron.

what part of me 

recognized your floorboards 

beneath the trash 

and began to clean? 

(I could see beneath it. Beneath the hurt, the habits, the chaos, the things that should have made me walk away. I saw the floorboards. I saw who you could be underneath everything that had piled up. And instead of asking why I was standing in someone else’s mess, I started cleaning.

Maybe some part of it felt familiar to me. Maybe I had learned somewhere along the way that loving someone meant understanding what other people could not, staying longer, helping more, seeing the good underneath the damage. That is what troubles me when I look back. I saw the mess and somehow felt at home enough to start cleaning.)

---

split.

You gave me every warning 

I gave each one 

another name 

(The signs were always there. In the first lie you told me. In the cruel joke you made at my expense. In the way you hid your drinking. In the rage I could see in your eyes. I noticed these things. My body noticed them too. But I didn’t trust myself.

I would feel something was wrong and quickly push it out of my mind. I would tell myself I was overthinking, being too sensitive, misunderstanding. Anything that let me return to the version of us I still wanted to believe in. That is what I mean when I say I gave every warning another name. I didn’t  want my intuition to be right. So I kept quieting it.  Until the things I had been trying not to see became too large to look around.The truth did not suddenly appear. It had been there the whole time. Eventually, it became all I could see. )

---

against myself.

Sometimes I look at you 

and I feel unloving, cruel 

then I am angry with myself 

because there are still times 

I cannot be without you 

(There were times I looked at you and did not recognize the person I became around you. I felt cold, angry, and sometimes even cruel. And then I would feel guilty for having those feelings, as though my anger meant there was something wrong with me. But I was angry because I had been hurt.

What confused me was that the hurt did not make the attachment disappear. There were still moments when I wanted you near me. Times when your absence felt harder than your presence. I could be angry with you and still reach for you. I could know something was hurting me and still feel afraid of losing it. That contradiction was difficult for me to understand.

I thought if I was angry enough, I should be able to leave. I thought if I still needed you, maybe what happened between us could not have been that bad. Now I understand that two things can exist at once. I could resent what the relationship was doing to me and still ache for the person inside it.)

---

delusion.

I hunger. 

I reach. 

You pull the plate away 

before I can see  

there is nothing on it. 

(I kept reaching because I believed there was something there for me. Every time I reached, you pulled away, and I mistook the distance for something I had to overcome. I never stopped to ask whether there was anything there at all. I was so focused on what I wasn’t getting that I never considered there might be nothing to receive. The distance kept me hungry. And the hunger kept me reaching.)

---

so much of.. me.

I gave you so much 

time. 

(I gave you so much time. 

Not just years. Mornings. Evenings. I was waiting. I was forgiving. I tried and tried again. I thought about you so much when I should have been thinking about myself.

I can’t get back the time.

That enrages me. For a long time it made me guard myself and grieve the time I lost. I gave you pieces of my life while believing we were building one together. I didn’t realize how much of my life was passing by.)

---

closed.

My body had become a locked room 

I closed the curtains 

I fell asleep 

(There was a time when my body stopped feeling like somewhere I wanted to live. I pulled inward. I stopped letting much in. I stopped wanting to be seen, touched, or reached for. Closing the curtains was my way of shutting the world out for a while.

And then I slept.

I was so tired of feeling everything. Tired of carrying what had happened. Tired of being awake inside a body that no longer felt safe to me. That is what the locked room means. I was still inside myself. I just didn’t know how to come out yet.)

---

pull.

I didn’t know I was capable 

 of so much violence. 

You pulled it from me 

like a loose thread. 

(I didn’t know I carried that much anger in me. I thought of myself as someone who could endure. Someone who could stay calm, explain, forgive, try again. Then there were moments when I didn’t recognize myself.

The anger came out sharp, loud, and sometimes ugly. It scared me because it felt so far from the person I believed myself to be. That is what I mean when I say you pulled it from me like a loose thread.

It felt like one small part of me was caught and pulled until everything I had been holding together began to unravel. I am not proud of every way I reacted. The way I scrunched my face in anger, balled my fists, cursed, and yelled. But I understand that version of me differently now. There was so much anger underneath everything I had been trying to endure.

I wish I had left the first time. I should have left long before I became someone I didn’t recognize.)

---

a home in you.

I wanted to live behind your eyes 

to move the furniture  

of your mind 

to quiet every thought 

that did not belong to me 

(I wanted to know what you were thinking all the time. I wanted to know where I lived in your mind. If you thought about me when I wasn’t there. If there were parts of you I could not reach. If someone else still lived in places I wanted to belong. That is what I mean when I say I wanted to move the furniture of your mind.

I wanted to rearrange anything that made me feel uncertain. I wanted to quiet the thoughts that made me feel replaceable. I wanted to make enough room for myself inside you that I would never have to question whether I mattered. It’s hard to admit how badly I wanted that. That a version of me like that existed.

I didn’t just want to be loved. I wanted to take up so much space in your mind that there would be no room for doubt. I wanted control.

I wanted to be the one you saw above everything else.)

---

restraint.

I noticed  

you fit in my hand 

I resisted  

the urge 

to crush you 

(I entered new relationships carrying things that had nothing to do with the person standing in front of me. Old anger. Suspicion. The need to protect myself before anything had even happened. I had learned what it felt like to be hurt, and somewhere along the way I also learned how to hurt back. I knew which words could cut. I knew how to withdraw, become cold, create confusion, or make someone feel as powerless as I once had.

You fit in my hand.

I was beginning to recognize the power I had over another person’s feelings, and how easily pain can move from one relationship into the next if we never stop to look at what we are carrying.

There were moments when I wanted someone else to feel what I had felt. And there were moments when I did squeeze a little. I said things I knew would hurt. I pulled away to make someone feel my absence. I let old pain speak through me before I understood where it was coming from.

I am not proud of those moments.

Restraint was realizing I had the power to hurt someone, admitting the ways I already had, and deciding I did not want my pain to keep becoming someone else’s. It took a long time to get there.)

---

you did not stay.

I liked the way  

you made me feel 

so I put you in my pocket 

certain you would wait 

until I wanted you again 

but you had learned 

before me 

not to live 

in the dark 

(I liked the way you made me feel, and for a while, I think I confused that feeling with having some kind of claim on you. I believed I could put you away and come back when I was ready. That you would still be there. Still wanting me. Still willing to step back into whatever space I had left for you.

I was thinking about what you gave me more than what it might feel like to be waiting for me. That wasn’t right. That is what the pocket means. Somewhere close enough that I could reach for you, but hidden away when I didn’t need you. I thought you would stay there. But you had already learned something I hadn’t.

No one should have to wait in the dark just because someone else might come looking for them again.)

---

turned.

I did not know that loneliness could feel 

so heavy 

as though my bones 

have turned to stone 

(I used to think loneliness was just missing someone. I didn’t know it could settle into the body. That it could make getting out of bed feel harder. Make a quiet room feel overwhelming. Make my own body feel like something I had to drag through the day.

I was so heavy. The world felt heavy. And there I was, alone inside all of it.

It hurt.)

---

it took you.

Slowly I saw  

all the ways I hated myself 

It took divine intervention 

it took 

you 

(Slowly, I began to see all the ways I had been unkind to myself. The things I accepted. The ways I abandoned my own feelings. How easily I believed I had to earn love, prove my worth, or become smaller to keep someone close. I didn’t see it clearly while I was living it. It took being hurt in the places where I was already hurting. That is what I mean when I say it took divine intervention.

It took you. You didn’t save me. Loving you forced me to see how desperately I needed to learn how to love myself.)

---

what you could do.

You placed everything 

 you hated about yourself 

inside me 

I did not fear you 

I feared what you could do 

(I think there were parts of yourself you could not stand to look at, so they ended up becoming mine to carry. Your anger. Your shame. Your suspicion. The things you could not forgive in yourself somehow became things you found in me.

After a while, I started questioning myself through your eyes. And when I say I did not fear you, I mean something more complicated than that. I did not always fear the person standing in front of me. I feared what could happen when the anger came. What might be said. What might change. How quickly the room could stop feeling safe.

Sometimes it is not the person you fear. It is what you have learned they are capable of.)

---

I. see. you.

I stopped trying to understand you 

and finally 

I saw you 

(I thought understanding you would make everything hurt less. I looked for reasons behind your behavior. Your past. Your pain. Your fears. I kept thinking that if I could understand where something came from, maybe I could forgive what it was doing to me.

Understanding became another way for me to stay. Eventually, I stopped asking why you were the way you were and started looking at how I felt when I was with you. I stopped searching beneath your actions for an explanation.

I let what you did speak for itself. I finally saw you. Not the person I hoped you would become. Not the person I could explain.

You, as you were.)

---

stone.

Each time I looked back 

to see if you were still there 

my feet hardened 

into stone 

(I kept trying to leave, but some part of me was always turning toward you. Just once more. To see if you were still there. If you had noticed the distance growing between us. If you might finally reach for me before I disappeared from view.

Every time I looked back, I gave the past another moment to hold me. That is what I mean when I say my feet hardened into stone. I thought I was looking for you. I didn’t realize I was becoming part of the place I was trying to escape. )

---

your eyes.

In the end, 

your eyes 

like the bottom of the sea, 

void of light,  

unflinching 

I came up gasping for air 

(By the end, I could look at you and feel how far away you were from me.

Your eyes felt deep, dark, unreachable. I kept searching them for something familiar. Warmth. Recognition. Some sign that the person I had loved was still there. But there were moments when I found nothing I could hold onto.

I had spent so long going deeper, trying to understand you, trying to reach you, that I didn’t  notice how badly I needed air. Eventually, I stopped searching the dark for you. I came back to the surface.

And only then did I realize how long I had been holding my breath. I could have drowned searching for you.)

---

next chapter: I am the love of my life (I sleep in the color yellow)