Between Bruises and Blooms

You never asked me to disappear.

Not out loud.

Love is rarely that honest.

It arrived in smaller requests.

Don’t bring that up.

Don’t cry tonight.

Don’t make this more difficult than it has to be.

So I folded myself into quieter versions.

A laugh without questions.

A smile without certainty.

An apology for wounds I couldn’t remember making.

I learned that peace could be manufactured—

if I carried enough of the weight.

People called it compromise.

They admired how patient I was.

How loyal.

How willing to fight for us.

They never saw how often the fight was against myself.

I stayed long enough to memorize the sound of my own silence.

Long enough that it almost felt like home.

And when I finally heard my own voice again,

it sounded like someone I had spent years pretending not to know.