i stopped bringing bandages to the battlefield

a declaration of independence from men who never stopped waging war with themselves

i used to read between silences
like they were love letters folded wrong
creases in all the wrong places,
but i smoothed them anyway.
held hands that shook at the thought of staying.
offered softness like a peace treaty
to men who never stopped waging war
with themselves.
i brought bandages to a battlefield
and called it connection.
they brought armor,
and i thought i could melt it with patience.

i mistook anxiety for chemistry.
thought being wanted for a moment
meant i was worthy of forever.
they touched me like secrets
they never intended to keep,
and 
i kept translating absence into depth.
thinking maybe 
if i lit up my love gently enough,
they’d stop squinting at the light.

but they didn’t leave loudly.
they left like fog
slow and certain.
one late text at a time.
and i stayed
not because i didn’t know better,
but because i still believed
in potential.
because i’d been taught
to wait for men to sign 
false contracts with empty promises.

i wrote poems
for shadows who lingered in my algorithm.
listened for footsteps in echoes
i made myself.
kept trying to read their silence
like it meant something
other than indifference.

and then

somewhere between
the daydream and the delay,
the promise and the disappearing act,
i started asking
different questions.

how long would i shrink
just to make someone stay?
how long would i stay soft
for people who didn’t know how to hold it?

i buried the old language
the one that rhymed longing with loyalty.
peeled illusions from my skin
like a burn from the wrong kind of heat.
let my craving for closure
go quiet.

i stopped building altars
for men who never bowed.
stopped romanticizing ache
just because it felt familiar.

and now
when love comes again,
it will not find me in a cage of patience.
it will not arrive to a girl
asking if she’s enough.

i am no longer waiting
to be claimed like lost treasure.
i am the ocean.
the storm.
the sky after the fire.
i am what stays.

and if someone comes
he will not come in pieces.
he will not flinch at depth.
he will not ask me to dim
just to feel bright beside me.
he will arrive
not as apology,
but as offering.
not as fixer,
but as witness.

and if no one comes?

then i will still be here.
laughing with my friends,
romancing my own damn life.
writing poems that don’t ache,
just glow.