“Ardour of love”
“calm in the storm”—
that’s what you made me,
a quiet sanctuary
for your disquieted soul.
But your chaos
wasn’t kind—
it seeped in, slowly—
it made me the hollow
where your darkness
would rest.
Locked
in love’s dark lair,
with crystals
and carnations—
empty symbols
that couldn’t soften
the steady suffocation
so, my voice
thinned
to vibrations,
struggling for air
that you always took first—
because it was the silence
you admired,
the deference
you never heard yourself
demanding
as your screams deafened me
into silence.
Muted me,
dressed me up in pretty names
like I was a balm to your fury.
By sundown,
I was simply a sacrifice
at the altar of your wrath.
A temple,
a mirror
for your guilt,
your shame—
I reflected everything
you couldn’t face.
Candlelights and camphor,
oil lamps and incense—
my colors blown into smoke,
a fog I couldn’t escape.
You blamed your shadows
while pulling me into them.
So, I learned how to shrink,
because your shame
has no room for two.
I folded in my bones
and turned fear into home.
The ground you walked on
and the walls that held you up—
yet you built your control
in the cracks of my voice.
So, slowly, I disappeared,
but I still wasn’t small enough
to fit inside the messy corners
of your life,
while you claimed every inch
of mine.
But it all bled away eventually,
a ghost in my body,
a hollow echo of someone
I could no longer see.
Even a cage has room
to breathe,
spaces
that let the light in.
But I made my own prison here,
didn’t I?
And I called it my name.
