I laid my heart upon the altar of your hands,
offered up every wound,
every hidden scar,
and you cataloged them quietly,
passed them like currency
to someone I barely knew.
I did not know I was a problem to be solved,
a door that needed opening from the outside,
while you held the key
and called it love.
You spoke my fears and dreams into another's ear
like secrets worth keeping
from the only one they belonged to —
me.
I was the last to know
what everyone around me
had already decided.
How does betrayal move so softly?
It does not arrive like a storm.
It seeps like smoke beneath a door,
fills every room before you smell it,
poisons the air you breathe
while you suffocate on the floor.
I grieve the person I believed you were.
I grieve the mornings that were never only ours.
I grieve the conversations
that were never private,
the vulnerabilities
that were never safe,
the love I gave
that was weighed and measured.
I felt broken and used
but no more.
I am furious.
I am standing in the wreckage
of a house I thought was home
and I am finally
seeing it clearly
for the first time.
You built something beautiful
on a foundation of my blindness and lies.
But I can see now.
And that is mine.
That will always be mine.
You cannot take that from me too.