There is a soft place inside me
where I keep the pieces of us,
where your laughter hums against the walls
and your love soaks through like sunlight.

It is the place I return to
when the world goes dark
the place I built
out of hope,
out of you.

But sometimes you speak
and your voice once a balm,
a soothing tonic,
becomes a blade,
sharp and sure
cutting through the carefulness.

You know where the fragile things live.
You have kissed every bruise,
charted every hollow.
How could you not know
how easily you break me?

I stand here holding the hurt,
like a child cupping water in trembling hands
trying not to spill,
trying to believe you didn’t mean it.

There is a special kind of ache
when the one you trust with your soul
throws stones
into the center of you
and doesn’t stay to watch the ripples.

I swallow the shards,
smile through the blood,
whisper to myself that your love is still here
that the wounds do not mean war,
that tenderness will return.

But inside,
I mourn a little each time,
for the version of me
who still believed
you would never be the one
to wound what you once promised to hold.