Softness Was Never Safe

I learned the weight of silence the day my name stopped echoing back to me,
the day I realized even my own thoughts no longer answered with kindness.

Morning still arrives like an obligation it never agreed to abandon,
spilling light across the world with no concern for those who cannot carry it.

I carried love carefully, as if tenderness were a fragile promise made of glass,
believing that if I held it gently enough, the world might finally be gentle in return.

But the world has a habit of mistaking softness for permission,
and it took everything I offered without ever asking how much I had left.

They say time heals, but time only taught me how to function while hollow,
how to smile with my lips while my chest quietly learned the shape of collapse.

I miss the version of myself who did not measure every breath for survival,
who did not rehearse courage before getting out of bed each morning.

Loneliness learned my routines, memorized my voice, and moved in without warning,
filling the rooms of my life with an echo that never lets me forget myself.

Some nights I wonder if I was created to feel everything too deeply,
or if I was only meant to break beautifully so others could call it meaning.

And if I disappear one day, do not name it tragedy or weakness or fate,
call it exhaustion—
a heart that loved relentlessly in a world that never learned how to hold it.