Her Love, My Grave

She loved me so much,  
it felt like wearing a mask that was too tight.  
I could still breathe, but just barely,  
like every word she spoke filled the air  
with something I couldn’t quite swallow.  
She thought she was saving me,  
patching up the cracks she didn’t see were part of me,  
but all it did was seal me in.

She’d give and give,  
like pouring water into a glass already full,  
not realizing I was spilling over,  
leaking out in ways I couldn’t show her.  
And every time I tried to hold on,  
tried to stand in the flood,  
I felt myself slipping a little more.  
She mistook my drowning for silence,  
my distance for needing more.

She built walls around us,  
thinking they’d keep the world out,  
but it only kept me in,  
trapped beneath the weight of her good intentions.  
She was digging a place for us,  
not realizing it was filling up faster than she could build.  
And I just stood there,  
letting it happen,  
because what do you do when someone loves you so much  
they forget to ask if you're still breathing?

By the time she looked down,  
I was already knee deep in the grave,  
and she didn’t see it until it was too late.  
She kept reaching for me,  
not knowing I’d been slipping away  
long before she ever started.  
And in the end,  
her love wasn’t the lifeline she thought it was.  
It was the weight  
that pulled me under,  
one piece at a time.