I loved him the way a man loves
what he believes will ruin him.
Quietly.
With hands that shook.
With a mouth full of apologies
I never learned how to say out loud.
The room was small,
but it held all of me
every unspeakable want,
every soft place I pretended not to have.
He slept beside me
like he had never learned shame.
His breath steady,
his body is certain.
As if love were something you could enter
without first burning your own house down.
I watched him sleep
and practiced leaving.
This is the violence without a name
not the fist,
not the blood,
but the slow removal of tenderness.
The way I learned to harden my voice
so I wouldn’t soften my life.
Men do not let another man
Hijack their sense of self
Sense of what they should be
Real men don’t let another man become their only truth.
but at night
Everything changed
The room overpowered everything
the room knew better.
It held us like a confession.
Held us together
tight as lips that held a secret
walls close enough to hear my fear breathing.
Every touch a question
I would not answer in the morning.
He loved me
with his whole, reckless heart.
I loved him like a secret
I told him I was leaving
as if departure were not a kind of murder.
A kind of betrayal
as if loving him halfway
had not already killed us both
even now
I carry the room inside my chest
the bed unmade,
the window dark with waiting,
his name pressed into the walls
where my hands once trembled.
I tell myself I chose freedom.
but the truth is softer
and far more unbearable:
I chose not to be seen.
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