Stitches

It kept happening—
not always, but enough times to break me.

I was not blind.
Not confused.
I knew what it was.

Every “no” wasn’t loud.

It didn’t come as a fight.
It came as silence.
As excuses.
As absence where something should have been.

And every time, it broke something.

Not all at once.

Piece by piece.

Not in pieces you can see.

In places that don’t heal right.
In places that remember
exactly how it felt the last time.

I was always the one left there.

On the floor.

Breathing through it.
Picking up the pieces.
Holding whatever was still inside of me
so it wouldn’t completely fall apart.

And then—

I would start again.

Gathering what was mine.

Every shard.
Every edge.
Every piece.

Cutting my hands just trying
to make myself whole again.

The glue of hope that didn’t hold.
The thread of reliance that kept tearing.

And still—

I tried.

At some point, it stopped being a heart.

It became something else.

Something disturbing to see,
to feel,
to touch.

Something assembled.
Forced.
Fragile in a way that had nothing to do with love anymore.

You could see it.

The seams.
The tension.
The places where it didn’t belong together anymore.

I could feel it.

Every time it was handled,
it hurt in a different place.

And I remember the moment
I realized—

there were missing pieces.

Pieces you took
for your own amusement.

Not lost.

Taken.

Because no matter how careful I was,
no matter how much I tried to rebuild it—

it never fit the same again.

Like you left with parts of me
I can’t replace.

And still—

I kept expecting something back.

From the only place
I was ever fully myself.

And I got scraps
you disguised as time.

But it was never enough.

Not even enough
to make me stop.

That’s the part that hurts the most.

Not what was done.

What I stayed for.