I get the rules. What I don’t get is the intent.
Why encourage me to weave myself into your life?
Why spend a year feeding me a fantasy,knowing all along you’d eventually walk away?
Perhaps I’m the naive one.
In fact, I must be.
I sat there, convinced I was your “Mrs. Jones” , humming along to a song whose lyrics I didn’t actually understand until now.
To be fair, he laid the ground rules from the start: no falling in love.
I understood the assignment.
I was certain I wouldn’t cross that line.
Besides, I had convinced myself that someone as broken as I was lacked the capacity for love anyway.
So, I agreed, and we became a part of each other’s daily lives.
I can’t speak for him, but I grew to love being part of his world.
I had always carried a quiet hunger to love and care for someone, and finding that outlet in him brought me a peace I hadn’t expected.
What I failed to realize, however, was that while I was finding a home in him, he was still just following the rules.
Imagine this:
You confess. He goes silent.
Not a single word.
You’ve created an awkward situation.
He’s in an awkward position.
You? You’re just dying.
Message read. No reply.
Do you double-text to “explain”?
Do you pivot and claim it was just an April Fool’s joke?
Or do you just accept your fate and vanish from the face of the earth?
The truth is, I’ve fallen for you.
It wasn’t a choice I made; it just happened quietly,
growing in the spaces between our conversations.
In fact, I thought I would never feel this again.
I was broken inside,
convinced I was incapable of loving or being loved.
But the desire grew with each passing day—
a slow, steady hunger to love you,
and the impossible wish to be loved by you in return.
I will stop writing now,
for it feels pointless.
I cannot express my love to you
for fear of losing the “us” we already have.
So I will say it here,
Just to make my heart happy for a moment:
I love you very much , baby.
And now, I’ll let the ink dry.
I’ll fold this feeling small enough to hide,
and carry the weight of it, gladly, in your presence.
One, two, three,
The plates crashed hard against the wall.
She stood in the center, eyes closed tight.
Four, five, six,
Glass shattered in a ring around her.
Her heart hammered against her ribs.
Seven, eight, nine,
The porcelain storm kept coming.
Ten.
The final shard finds its mark.
It bites into her skin, a sharp, red sting—
There is blood, but oddly, she doesn’t feel it.
The numbness is a shield.
Inside, she is a landslide of shaking nerves,
But she stands like a statue in the debris.
She cannot break, because she is the floor
On which the children stand.
In the deep hush of the night, while the house sleeps, her tears trickle quietly.
Even they seem to know that silence is her only sanctuary; it is safer that way.
Her heart thrashes, demanding answers and threatening to break into a sob, but she whispers comfort to the ache.
She tells her heart that everything will be okay, though she knows it is a lie.
It will never be okay—not unless she leaves.
But leaving is a door a mother can never truly walk through.
Left behind, her heart sinks into a quiet, heavy disappointment.
Eventually, sleep claims her.
Her pillow dries her tears as it always does, and her duvet wraps around her—the only things left to offer her the comfort and warmth she so desperately needs.
Millypede 