Before

It all starts somewhere, it all starts somehow , no misunderstanding. It starts with a shared breath, a secret kept like a polished stone, the quiet gravity of believing that "us" was a fortress built on ground too holy to ever shake. I memorized the map of your integrity, never realizing I was studying a landscape you were already planning to burn. There is a specific kind of silence that follows the strike— not the absence of sound, but the presence of ruin. It’s the sound of every "always" and "forever" shattering into microscopic shards of glass that now inhabit my bloodstream. To be betrayed is to become a stranger in your own skin, wondering which parts of your history were real and which were just beautiful scripts you read while I slept. I am digging through the "Before," trying to find the exact second the rot set in. Was it in that laugh? Was it behind that kiss? The agony isn't just that you lied; it’s that you let me keep loving a ghost while the person standing in front of me was already holding the match.