I never knew hands could touch
without ever brushing skin,
or how a voice could thread through ribs
and teach a heart to sing again.
You were a garden I stumbled into,
wild lilies climbing every broken fence,
their scent so thick, so sweet,
I forgot the world I was running from.
We built a thousand dreams
between the commas of our silences,
Your laughter weaving through the spaces
where doubt once lived.
And God, the way we fit—
Like rain hitting heating concrete,
like sighs into waiting arms.
I didn’t believe it could be real.
But love had torn my hands before,
left lilies rotting in my palms,
and I knew–—
I knew I'd only ruin something so pure.
So I broke first,
chose the lie over the fall,
let the fear wear my face,
let you believe I was never yours.
You didn’t chase me.
Maybe you thought I never cared.
Maybe it’s better you think that.
Maybe it’s safer if you forget.
Now I only hold the echoes—
the soft half-smile in your words,
the way your laughter cradled my broken parts,
the feeling of finding home
in someone I was too afraid to deserve.
We were a wildfire of could-have-been,
burned out before the first match struck,
leaving nothing behind
but ashes that still smell of lilies,
and the cruel memory
of what it felt like to belong.
Now I walk through a life you never touched,
grieving through almosts that's left in fragments,
watering dead lilies in the garden of my chest,
wishing you would hate me,
so it might hurt you less.
But the truth is,
I never felt like this with anyone —
you left a covet in me masking
to leave you aching for someone
who would never leave.
And in the quiet,
where your memory still breathes,
I kneel before a field of dying lilies,
and bury myself, deep
beside the love I was too coward to stay.
I'm the wildflower that you shouldn't keep
Erennwrites