️ Persistent Patterns

By MissT

Today, I let the broken man go
The one who touched me —
Not with hands,
But with a kind of haunted ache.

I’d seen his kind before,
Vulnerable like a child
Who never learned where to put
All the pain he carried.

Eyes full of ghosts and fading dreams,
Chasing truths down the bottom of a glass,
Smoke curling like sorrow —
He drew it in deep,
As if breathing could burn the grief away.

Not long ago,
I left another man behind —
His anguish a tide
That pulled me under.

His need screamed louder than mine,
And I learned how to shrink
So he could survive.
Piece by piece, I disappeared.

Now I see the pattern —
What I call love
Often wears a wound.

But I am not a sanctuary
For every soul who won’t heal.
I won’t answer the cry
Of the beautifully broken,
Not when my own silence
Still aches to be heard.

I cannot give my life
To honor another’s pain
While I am just now
Learning how to live in mine.

I water the plants I once forgot.
I wake without dread.
I listen for my own voice
In the soft hours of morning —
And finally, it speaks.

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