Just processing things.
I didn’t see it leave. It had made a home in the hollows of me that quiet monster, all teeth and impatience, teaching my heart to live in half-light, teaching my body how to brace for what it already knew would end.
By Baileyabout a month ago in Poets
I learned early that love has a sound. It is doors closing softly— or more often, slamming shut, wrapped in chains and barbed wire.
By Bailey2 months ago in Poets
I haven’t met him, and still my eyes ache like they’re remembering something they haven’t touched. I move through rooms with a quiet pressure in my chest, as if I’m carrying a question that refuses to be asked.
We learned love early— the kind that grows beside you, built from shared streets and futures assumed before choice had language. He loved me with certainty, the way you do when staying feels the same as forever.
By Bailey3 months ago in Poets
He loved the idea of perfection— how it looked from a distance, how carefully it could be arranged. He was always already finished, always intact.
You arrived like something borrowed from a story—clean boots, practiced smile, eyes that knew how to look enchanted. I thought enchantment meant safety. I didn’t yet know the difference.
Nothing changed. The moment stayed itself. Silence did not tilt. No meaning was added to it. I was not corrected for being slow. I was not pulled back into conversation.
Before anything is said, my body adjusts. Not noticeably. Just enough to register the room as if it were weather. My jaw sets— not in defense, more like recognition.
The glass is still there. Untouched. Once, a voice taught me how quickly warmth could turn. How sweetness was not softness—it was warning.
The sky splits open like it remembers. Lightning snaps to attention across the plains, sharp as an order no one questioned. There’s a storm in me tonight— one trained to wait, one taught endurance by slammed doors and swallowed screams.
I don't stand at the edge anymore. I step back. Distance has become an instinct, a habit that keeps me breathing. Wanting something more feels dangerous- like striking a match inside my chest and pretending I won't feel the burn. Every maybe sounds like a warning.
They imagine me in fragments- a mouth without a voice, eyes emptied of history, a body pared down to surfaces. They linger longest on what shines and glows that can be stripped of weight. They focus on what can be smoothed until it no longer resists and names it lovely.
