I was young the day I met you,
too young to read the shadows in your grin.
Too young to know that love ain’t love
when every step cuts deeper in.
All the while you were sinking slow,
one drink pulling you further down.
I kept thinking if I held you close,
maybe you wouldn’t drown.
So I followed you from bar to bar,
through neon smoke and practiced lies…
pretending all your slurred apologies
weren’t warnings in disguise.
I raised your boy like he was mine,
he needed softness you denied.
I gave him every gentle thing,
you never even tried.
You may have never laid a hand on me,
but fear lived heavy in the room.
Your silence cut like sharpened steel,
It was a quiet kind of doom.
So I learned to
stay small,
stay quiet,
stay careful too…
’cause your words did all the breaking,
your fists never had to do.
They say sticks and stones may break my bones,
but your voice…
your voice hollowed me inside,
killing pieces I didn’t know could die.
You accused me of cheating
while I was trying to pull you through.
You tore through:
my peace,
my phone,
my clothes,
searching for sins I never knew.
All while you were out there
giving pieces of yourself for fun.
I stayed faithful…
you stayed faithless…
and still made me feel like the guilty one.
The nights were always endless.
I feared the moment I’d drift under,
scared which version you would summon,
which one would drag me from my slumber.
Scared of the storms inside your head,
the kind that always left a mark.
Three years of bending to your anger,
three years loving you through the dark.
I loved you harder than you ever could,
’til my face turned pale and thin.
A ghost staring back from the mirror,
a stranger wearing my skin.
Sticks and stones never touched my skin,
but your words…
your words bruised everything beneath it,
leaving marks no one else could see within it.
You called me a liar,
while you slipped into the night.
You made me doubt
my sanity,
my worth,
my truth,
while you were out there proving
your own lies in plain sight.
I held on until my hands were trembling,
you let go without a thought at all.
And still you tried to pass me the blame,
a curse you prayed would make me fall.
But something in me,
maybe the last unbroken spark,
rose up from the ashes
and whispered through the dark,
“No more.”
I remembered who I used to be
before fear rewrote my name.
I walked away still trembling,
but I walked away the same.
Free like doors thrown open
after years of living blind,
free like breath returning
to a drowning, desperate mind.
You didn’t break my bones,
but you tried to break my spirit…
and still…
I’m here.
I’m whole.
I’m mine again.
Your words don’t haunt these walls now,
your lies don’t echo in my chest.
I found the strength you swore I lacked
and used it all to take that step.
This time I’m the one who left,
and I never once looked back…
not even in my dreams.
