Unstitched Version of Me

06/21/2026

I carved away pieces of my chest,
handing them out like breadcrumbs
to a hunger that could never be filled.
I thought if I gave you enough of my light,
the shadows in your eyes would finally break,
and you would see me.
​But love is not a currency;
I could not buy your devotion with my depletion.
​I loved you with a gravity that bends bone,
a fierce, unblinking tide that poured and poured
into a vessel laced with cracks.
You drank until you were whole,
and left me entirely empty
a hollow shell echoing with the ghost of my own warmth.
​It is a quiet, devastating ache
to realize your capacity to care is a wildfire,
and theirs is just a match that refused to strike.
I have bled myself pale trying to keep you warm,
only to stand freezing in the winter of your silence.
​There is nothing left inside to give.
The vault is bare, the well is dry,
and still, my foolish, stubborn heart
beats out a rhythm meant only for you
shattered, but somehow, tragically, still open.

06/21/2026

I held your fragments in my naked hands,
unmindful of the edges cutting deep,
and built a fortress out of my own skin
to guard the broken corners of your sleep.
When nightmares chased the color from your face,
I breathed my own air down into your chest,
and traded every peace I ever owned
to lull your raging phantoms into rest.
​I gave you secrets shielded from the world,
the sacred, hidden spaces of my soul.
I poured my time, my youth, my vital spark
into your cracks, just trying to make you whole.
It wasn't currency to buy your heart,
nor selfish vanity that drove my hands
it was a love so fierce it would have marched
through hell itself to answer your demands.
​But you drank down my marrow like a wine,
and left the glass discarded on the floor.
I bled myself to paint your canvas bright,
yet still, you stood there, begging for some more.
I am a hollow valley, stripped and bare,
a ruined temple where the fire died.
I resurrected you from your own dark,
and now I drown inside this empty tide.
​How agonizing, then, to look at you
rebuilt, restored, and standing in the light
while I am just a ghost of who I was,
a casualty of fighting for your night.
I gave until the vault was turned to dust,
I broke my bones to serve as your defense.
And still, it wasn't enough to make you stay.
And still, it wasn't enough to make it sense.

06/20/2026

If I ever open the gates again,
if this ribcage, stitched with gold and hard-won stone,
ever learns to soften into a pulse that answers another,
he will have to know the heavy math of my survival.
​He will not hold me like a fleeting season,
or a temporary shelter built for the rain.
When his arms close around me,
it will feel like a quiet, undeniable claiming
as if the earth shrunk down to a single room,
and I am the only face he sees in the crowded dark.
​He will be the architecture that does not shatter.
When the vertigo of the past pulls at my heels,
and the air thins, and the old terrors try to drag me down,
he will not stand by and watch the descent.
He will catch me before I even know I am falling.
He will be the ground that rises to meet me,
solid, unyielding, and safe.
​He will look at this heart
this fierce, wild thing that has survived the unraveling
and he will not try to tame it or take it for granted.
He will hold it like the rarest artifact,
cherishing every crack, every seam, every jagged edge,
knowing exactly what it cost to keep it beating.
​If I ever surrender to the quiet heat of love again,
it will be because he is a fortress, not a cage.
He will hold me close,
he will keep me safe,
and he will never let me hit the ground.

06/13/2026

The morning light is cold and still,
A quiet space we always fill
When all the world is fast asleep,
And I’m the secret you must keep.
You come to me with shadowed grace,
A phantom in this hidden place,
Stealing hours from the dawn,
Before the sun says you’ll be gone.
​My body shook, the tears ran free,
While you held tight and questioned me,
Asking soft, with worried eyes,
If you had caused these broken sighs.
I looked at you, my voice a lie,
And whispered no beneath the sky
But truth was bleeding on the floor,
A silent ache, an open door.
​The truth is, you have left your mark,
A thousand times within the dark.
No heavy hand, no physical scar,
But mentally, you’ve stretched too far.
Emotionally, you tear the seams,
And splinter all my quiet dreams,
Because the pattern never breaks:
I give, and take what your ghost leaves.
​I am the woman never chosen.
A sudden warmth, then quickly frozen.
You keep me tucked behind the screen,
Unspoken, private, and unseen.
You call on me to take my fill,
To drain the passion and the will,
And once you have what I can give,
You vanish so that you can live.
​You disappear into the air,
And leave me holding empty care,
Until the next time hunger calls,
And you return to these four walls.
So yes, you hurt me, deep and true
But here is what I also do:
I open up the lock and key.
I let you bruise the heart of me.

06/11/2026

The Architecture of Echoes
​I am stitching a garment out of phantom thread,
tailoring a warmth for an empty space.
I give you the marrow, the gold, the unsaid,
and receive, in return, a phantom embrace.
​How beautifully cruel, the physics of this:
to be a torrential, unmappable sea,
hurling my waves at a shoreline of stone,
that shape shifts, and shrugs, and absorbs all of me.
​I have memorized the quiet geometry of your spine,
the way you look away when the light hits just right.
I am a satellite locked in a desperate design,
orbiting a sun that belongs to the night.
​It hurts in the places where boundaries blur,
where the ghost of your hand feels completely concrete.
I am drowning in things that will never occur,
while my own stubborn heart beats a rhythm of defeat.
​To love you is standing at the edge of a well,
dropping my coins in, but hearing no sound.
No splash in the dark. No restorative spell.
Just the long, quiet drop to a bottomless ground.
​So I wrap up the pieces, the frayed and the torn,
and I wonder how much a spirit can bleed,
before it remembers the skin it had worn
before it was bent by a phantom need.

05/30/2026

05/30/2026

A phantom strike in an empty room,
I build the scaffold, I script the doom.
Before the gavel has time to fall,
I’m already tearing down the wall.
I see the shift in a slowed reply,
The heavy space in a passing sigh,
And my brain, a hyper-vigilant thief,
Translates a breath into sudden grief.
​They’re pulling away, the whisper starts,
The old familiar, poisoned darts.
So I spin the wheel of a thousand "whys,"
And map the storms in their quiet eyes.
I overthink every word they said,
Weaving a noose from a single thread,
Dissecting the silence until it bleeds,
Planting the rot where there were no seeds.
​It’s an agonizing, brilliant art:
To break my own uninjured heart.
Because if I strike the match today,
I control the fire either way.
If I burn the bridge while we’re standing on it,
I write the ending, I own the sonnet.
It hurts like hell, but at least I chose
To be the one who deals the blows.
It’s safer to bleed by my own sharp hand
Than wait for the blow I can't withstand.
​Get out first. Pull the plug.
Trade the warmth for a cold, safe hug.
Kill the love before it kills you.
That’s the lie that feels so true.

​So I push and I pull till the hinges break,
Demanding a price they didn't ask to take.
I bleed on the friends who tried to stay,
Screaming “I knew you’d leave!” as I walk away.
I isolate from the family blood,
And drown the person I love in the flood
Of my own exhausting, desperate fear
Chasing them off while begging them near.
​I sabotage the sweetest thing,
To dodge the phantom, future sting.
And when the dust and the smoke clear out,
I stand alone in the wreckage of doubt.
They didn't leave—I drove them gone.
I cursed the night and killed the dawn.
​Now I sit in the quiet I fiercely made,
A lonely king of a ruined glade.
Protected, pristine, and entirely broken,
By the weight of words that were never spoken.

05/29/2026

The Fortress of the Bleeding Heart
​I built a sanctuary on shifting sand,
And called it a safe shore.
I ignored the quiet warnings of my own hand,
Blinded by the light of what I hungered for.
Loving you was my first, fractured mistake
A calculated risk I never should have taken,
A sacred promise to myself I had to break,
Leaving my own soul forsaken.
​I should have learned lifetimes ago,
In the quiet ache of a one-sided grace,
That the deeper the river of devotion flows,
The sharper the blade in an empty space.
I cut myself open to hand you the part
That was most precious, most tender, most true,
Only to watch the architecture of my heart
Be torn apart by the shadow of you.
​A lifetime of echoes, a history of scars,
From those who claimed the title of "guardian" and "friend."
They swore by the sun and the alignment of stars,
Yet betrayed the love they promised to defend.
But this is the final, shattering stone,
The hardest lesson a bruised soul must learn:
To never again leave the castle prone,
Or give away the keys for which others yearn.
​No more access to the fragile depth of my chest.
No more power surrendered to hands that destroy.
I am tired of being the one put to the test,
A disposable piece in someone else's toy.
I am tired of bleeding, of pouring out floods,
Straining to fill a cup that never is tough,
Sinking beneath the weight of my own blood,
And screaming into the void that I am not enough.
​So, let the stone rise. Let the mortar dry.
I will build a wall that the world cannot scale.
Behind the high granite, under a silent sky,
My own fierce loyalty is what will prevail.
I choose the wreckage. I choose the mend.
I choose the sovereignty of my own name.
The era of laying myself bare has come to an end;
I am pulling my heart out of the game.