midnight

as a checkpoint

in someone else’s fear.

The train was full

shoulders, breath,

the soft collision of strangers

just trying to get home.

Nothing unusual,

nothing worth a warning.

But in your mind

it becomes a threat

a thousand hands reaching,

a danger I must prove

I survived.

So I send you pieces of myself:

a photo,

a message,

a list of names I barely know,

the color of my shirt,

the space beside me.

Proof that I am still untouched,

still yours to worry over.

And I speak—

not because I want to tell you

about my day,

but because silence

feels like disobedience.

I explain and explain

until my words lose meaning,

until my voice no longer sounds

like mine.

This is not care.

This is not love.

Love does not ask

for constant evidence

of survival.

Love does not turn

freedom into something

that must be reported.

I am not fragile glass

to be guarded from every crowd.

I am not a location pin

you refresh for peace of mind.

I am movement,

breath,

choice.

And I will not trade

the quiet joy of existing

for a life

where every step

must be accounted for.

I will not settle

for a love

that watches me so closely

it forgets

to let me live.

I knew you loved me.

Not in guesses, not in maybes,

but in the way I held onto you

like something certain.

I believed in it too much—in you,

in the day you would finally see me clearly.

See my worth

without me having to prove it,

without me having to shrink

just to fit inside your fears.

I waited for that moment

like it was promised—the day you would realize

that your thoughts were not my fault,

that your storms were not mine to carry.

That I was hurting too.

But every time,

hope turned into disappointment—quiet, familiar,

the kind that doesn’t shatter

but slowly wears you down.

Because when your mind got loud,

I disappeared.

You stopped seeing me

and started listening to the voices

that painted me into something I wasn’t.

Someone to blame.

Someone to question.

Someone to doubt.

And no matter how softly I spoke,

no matter how much I stayed,

you never heard me

over the noise inside you.

You didn’t stop loving me

that’s the cruelest part.

You just stopped choosing me

when it mattered most.

midnight

not the kind they warn you about,

not fire or ruin all at once,

but a slow unraveling

I almost mistook for devotion.

I did not unlove you.

Even now, I carry the proof of that

in the way my chest still aches

when I think of us.

But you drained me—

quietly, persistently—

until love felt less like breathing

and more like drowning politely.

Until one day,

the words slipped out of me,

tired and trembling:

I don’t want this kind of love anymore.

And I wondered,

in the silence that followed—

was it ever love to begin with?

Or just fear,

dressed in concern,

tightening its grip around my life

every time I stepped beyond you?

Your worries grew teeth.

They followed me everywhere,

turning my laughter into something cautious,

my freedom into something negotiable.

So I shrank—

piece by piece,

choice by choice—

until I barely recognized

the person who stayed.

All to keep you.

All to keep the peace.

All to keep something

that kept undoing me.

midnight