Why Do You Hate Me?

I stand at the edge of a quiet room,

the light thin as a sigh, and hear your echo—

a tremor in the air that once sang sweet,

now shivers with a question sharp as frost.

 

Why do you hate me?—the words slip out,

not louder than my own pulse, but louder

than the years we stitched together, thread by thread,

each knot a promise, each seam a secret.

 

I trace the shape of your silence,

a map of shadows drawn on paper skin,

and wonder if the fault lies in the ink,

or in the heart that learns to read it wrong.

 

Do you see the garden we once tended—

the roses that bloomed under a winter sky—

now bruised, their petals curled toward the ground,

as if the very soil has turned against them?

Or perhaps you carry a storm inside,

a thunder that knows no name, no mercy,

and I am the lightning you cannot catch,

a flash that haunts the clouds, not the rain.

 

I lift my hands, not in plea, but in question,

asking the wind to carry my breath to you: