You never loved me. You just wanted to own me.
You didn’t fall in love with me.
You fell in love with your reflection in my eyes.
I was the canvas, you were the brush—
but the painting was always your own face.
You whispered sonnets soaked in sugar,
but every word was a leash.
You didn’t want a partner.
You wanted a prisoner with a smile.
You called it love.
But love doesn’t come with a cage.
You were the playwright, the actor, the critic.
I was the stage.
You performed affection like a god in exile—
grand, tragic, and always misunderstood.
You fed me silence when I needed truth.
You gave me chaos and called it passion.
You broke me into pieces
and blamed me for bleeding.
You wore my empathy like a crown.
You drank my light like wine.
And when I was empty,
you called me ungrateful.
But I woke up.
Not with a scream, but with a whisper:
This is not love.
I stitched myself together with threads of rage and clarity.
I learned that silence can be sacred.
That solitude can be healing.
That I am not a mirror,
I am a galaxy.
You tried to shrink me into your shadow.
But I grew roots in the dark.
And now I bloom in places you’ll never reach.
You still wear your mask, don’t you?
Still charming, still tragic, still empty.
You haunt new hearts now,
feeding on their light like a parasite in silk.
But I see you.
I see the rot behind the smile.
The self-loathing you drown in perfume.
The emptiness you dress in applause.
You will never be whole.
Because you never learned to love—
only to consume.
I am not bitter.
I am baptized.
I walked through your fire
and came out forged.
You don’t get to own my story.
You don’t get to haunt my joy.
I am not your echo.
I am the thunder that follows.
And while you rot in your kingdom of mirrors,
I dance in the light of my own becoming.
If you’re reading this from the cage—
know this:
You are not crazy.
You are not weak.
You are not alone.
There is life beyond the gaslight.
There is love beyond the performance.
There is you—
unbroken, unowned, and rising.
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