hesitation

I was learning how to breathe again after love carved its name into me and left me bleeding in the quiet. Then he appeared—soft, unintentional— and something in me flickered that I wasn’t ready to feel. I’m scared of wanting. Scared of falling back into the fire with hands still burned from the last one. And he doesn’t want me— I can feel that truth like a bruise. I was finally getting better, finally standing without shaking, but now the old wounds open like they’ve been waiting. It hurts to hope. It hurts to feel anything at all. And I’m so tired of bleeding for people who never bleed for me.