I Would Have Never

Two months ago,

I wouldn’t have dared to speak

a single truth about you

not the hurt,

not the disappointment,

not the way you carved a hollow space

inside my chest

and left me to fill it alone.

Back then,

I protected you more than myself.

I softened every blow,

made excuses for the sharp edges

you kept cutting me with.

I held my tongue so tightly

my silence became a bruise

invisible to you,

but aching every day to me.

I wouldn’t have said

how your absence felt like betrayal,

how your coldness

turned parts of me numb,

how your sudden distance

made me question

every piece of my worth.

I wouldn’t have whispered a word

about how I waited

for replies,

for effort,

for you to care

the way I cared.

And every time you didn’t,

I folded my pain smaller,

thinking maybe it was my fault

for feeling too deeply

in a friendship you treated

like a disposable moment.

But now…

now something in me refuses to bend

just to keep the peace with a ghost.

Now I speak from the wound

you left wide open,

because pretending it didn’t hurt

was killing me louder

than the truth ever could.

Now I say it plainly:

you broke something in me

when you walked away

and acted like I didn’t matter.

You taught me

what it feels like

to be abandoned in silence,

to be left holding conversations

that only existed in my head.

I won’t speak your name

you don’t deserve the power of it anymore

but I’ll speak the truth

I once swallowed for your comfort.

Two months ago,

I would’ve stayed quiet to protect you.

But today,

I speak to protect myself.

And maybe that’s the real shift

the version of me that loved you

more gently than you ever handled me

is gone.

Now I choose my voice

over your memory.

Now I choose my healing

over your absence.

Now I speak every word

I once buried alive.

You might never hear it

but I finally do.

And that’s enough.