I used to love like a storm
no map,
no shelter,
just sky and surrender.
The kind of love that
undoes your name
and doesn’t ask
if it can.

He was ruin,
and I walked in like
a pilgrim.

Now
I trace lives in pencil.
Measure joy in teaspoons.
Ask if the floor can hold
this kind of weight.
Love, this time,
comes with a blueprint.
I carry a calculator
in my chest.

It’s not that I don’t feel
it’s that I count the cost
before I bleed.