Bruised Heart, Unsteady Hands

I stitched myself together with trembling fingers, threading silence through the places your memory still bleeds. I told myself I was healing— that the shaking in my chest was only the past learning to loosen its grip. But then he walked in with a quiet smile that felt like sunlight on a room I’d boarded shut. And suddenly my ribs remembered how to open, even though my heart still flinched at every echo of what you broke. I hate that I’m falling— slowly, unwillingly, like a leaf dragged back into the same storm that once tore it apart. I hate that he doesn’t feel it, that I’m reaching for someone who will never reach back. It’s a familiar ache, a cruel déjà vu, a reminder that hope can be another kind of wound. I was finally getting better. Finally breathing without tasting the rust of old heartbreak. But now I’m drained again— pulled under by feelings I never asked for, fighting shadows that look too much like you, and fears that whisper I’ll never be enough for anyone I choose.