We built a house from splinters and sparks,
twelve years of weather held together by wanting.
Before the vows, before the rings,
there were already cracks beneath our feet,
Dainty fault lines we kept covering
with kisses, apologies, and hope.
We thought marriage might turn ruin into refuge,
might teach two wounded people
how to stop wounding each other.
But love is not a carpenter.
It cannot rebuild trust once it rots,
cannot force respect to grow
where pride keeps tearing up the roots.
Although, we tried.
We carried each other through funerals, failures,
empty bank accounts and sleepless nights.
We survived storms that should have drowned us,
yet somehow kept sinking in inches of silence.
And you were the only woman
I ever pictured beside me
when I thought about home.
The only face I saw
when I imagined small footsteps in the hallway,
a family gathered around tired but sacred things.
We reached for that life together
and watched it disappear
through our hands like smoke.
I still replay the ending
as if memory might finally confess
what love could not fix.
Because it wasn’t the absence of love that buried us.
It was suspicion sitting at the table with us,
resentment sleeping between us,
respect leaving
while we were busy fighting to be understood.
Now you say you want to come home.
You say it carefully,
like someone holding a match near gasoline.
You tell me you’re not coming back for me,
yet you won’t come back if I’m gone.
And I hear the hesitation hidden in your voice,
that familiar doorway left half open
in case you need to run again.
You want certainty without surrender,
the comfort of my arms
without the weight of choosing them fully.
You want the safety of return
without paying the cost of repair.
And maybe that’s what breaks me most
because part of me would still open the door.
Part of me still loves you
with the same dangerous loyalty
that nearly destroyed me.
But I remember what it took
to survive losing you.
How I had to stitch myself together
with shaking hands.
How long it took
before mornings stopped feeling like funerals.
So now I stand between memory and warning,
between the woman who still loves you
and the woman who finally learned
love alone is not enough.
And I do not know
which one of them
will answer
If you come home.
