TheGenevaConventions

I’m sorry I’m such a hard woman to love.

I know you’re trying.

I see it in the way you stay, in the way your hands hesitate before they leave.

You whisper sweet things like sugar over rot.

And I swallow them, because I want to believe.

But I’m built with thorns, not to hurt, just to keep the world from pressing too close.

I push people away.

And then I ache when they go.

I crumble when they find someone softer, someone simpler, someone not always on the edge of too much.

So I go quiet.

I disappear in plain sight.

Not to punish you.

Not to be cruel.

I promise I’m kind.

But kindness doesn’t always come clean.

It spills out crooked, leaks between the cracks in my armor, pours from my mouth in words I never meant to weaponize.

I press my fingers over my lips like I can stop it.

The sharp, scared woman beneath the skin.

What if this is me at my best? What if I’m already giving all I’ve got and it still doesn’t feel like enough? What if loving me is always going to feel like work? Like labor? Like carrying something uphill only to find the hill never ends?

I don’t want love that feels like begging.

Like I have to trade pieces of myself just to feel held.

And it was love, wasn’t it?

Even if it was brief.

Even if it had an expiration date I didn’t want to read.

If this is my penance for being exactly who I am, for being all thunder and tremble and truth, then fine.

I’ll carry it.

I’ll hold you as long as you’ll let me.

And when the day comes that we look at each other like we’ve never met, I’ll pretend my chest doesn’t cave in.

I’ll let you become my favorite memory in real time.

I’ll burn every second into my skin like it was sacred.

And you, hopefully with that soft smile, the one that used to make me feel a little less sharp, you’ll turn, and walk away.

We were doomed by the narrative, a story we didn’t write.

Every glance, every touch.

Proof we were meant to be, even as the ground split beneath us.

God, didn’t it feel like a miracle?

We followed like sleepwalkers through the dark.

We were made for each other, in all the wrong ways.

Like fire and oxygen.

We burned so beautifully we forgot it was killing us.

We were never going to make it.

Even when we tried, we were patching up a ship that loved to sink.

But we planned names for our children.

Hung dreams like pictures in a house we were already leaving.

We were fated for this.

Not the falling in, but the falling apart.

Not the kiss, but the echo after.

Hoping we could rewrite the ending already carved into our bones.

It should have never turned out like this.

It was always going to.

I wouldn’t change a thing.

Even now, with my hands empty.

I’d still choose you just to lose you again.

The script was carved too deep.

It was always going to end this way, not with a bang, but with the silence after the door closes.

This was our destiny, written before we knew how to hold each other without letting go.

We kept pretending it wouldn’t.

Kept loving like love wasn’t the blade.

This was our destiny long before we touched.

To find something real, only to watch it break exactly how it was meant to.

I had a dream about you last night.

I told you I missed you.

No hesitation, no pride to swallow.

Your arms wrapped around me, warm like they used to be.

I smelled that cologne I gave you, the one you never stopped wearing.

You showed me a hidden box, things you’d kept, things you thought I’d love.

Tucked deep in a closet you never meant to share.

You looked at me like you wanted to believe again.

I woke up whole.

For a second.

Then it slipped.

A hope, nothing more.

Just an ache flung into the dark, echoing from somewhere deep within me to the indifferent stars.

I wonder if you felt it too.

We still sleep beneath the same sky.

This is killing me.

The spaces between our laughs.

The ache beneath my calm.

I’m trying so hard to get past it.

To not flinch when you don’t reach for me.

To not break when you look away.

You lie beside me, breathing like nothing's wrong.

The ceiling counts our silences, every word I don't say.

You laugh at something small.

I answer, but I’m not there.

I’m watching how you don’t try to find me in the way you used to, like your hands forgot the urgency.

Somewhere between the dishes and the shared glances across rooms, something softened into a thing I can’t hold.

And I keep pretending I don’t notice.

You ask if I’m okay.

I smile.

Muscle memory.

Say I’m fine, though the inside of me feels like it’s shrinking.

It’s not that you’ve stopped loving me.

That would be easier.

It’s the way you linger too long on someone else, the way you come back but not all the way.

I feel you slipping.

Like your want for me has faded into comfort.

The spark we had has faded into a soft, dull glow.

I ache in the presence of your kindness, in the warmth you still give freely.

Because it’s not gone, it’s just changed.

And I don’t know what to do with that. Nights stretch long.

You fall asleep first.

I stare at the dark, trying to remember the last time I felt wanted without wondering if it was just habit.

I don’t say anything.

You’d feel guilty.

You’d try harder.

I’d hate that too.

But I miss the version of us that never felt like effort.

The quiet has weight now.

Your touch is tender, but it doesn’t reach. I’m still here.

Still loving.

Still breaking, softly, slowly, where you can’t see.