Where Love Heals

saying “i would’ve set myself on fire if you told me to”
was never meant to be taken literally

it meant
i would have abandoned myself
to keep you warm

you took it as permission

and i didn’t even notice the fire at first

that’s the terrifying part

it felt warm
it felt like being wanted
it felt like finally being chosen

i was so used to starving
that even being slowly consumed
felt like love

so i stayed

through the apologies i gave
for wounds i didn’t create
through the slow erosion
of my own voice

i kept calling it love

because naming it anything else
would have shattered me

i learned how to shrink beautifully

how to speak softly enough
not to trigger distance

how to swallow hurt
before i became inconvenient

how to make myself easier to hold
by asking for less

less reassurance
less honesty
less tenderness
less

until there was barely anything left of me
except need
and the desperate hope
that enduring pain long enough
would eventually transform it
into being chosen by you

i started disappearing
not all at once

but slowly
quietly
like it was my purpose

piece by piece
until survival started dressing itself up
as romance

I would have burned for someone
who only ever came close enough
to watch me catch fire

and i would have thanked you
for staying

that’s how broken my understanding of love had become

but something in me finally cracked

not loudly
not dramatically

just a small unbearable realization
that love should not feel like slowly dying

that being chosen should not require self-abandonment

that tenderness is not supposed to leave bruises
i have to emotionally explain away

and once i saw it
really saw it

i could no longer romanticize
what was destroying me

i looked back at all the times
i accepted crumbs
while calling it patience

all the ways
i carried the entire relationship
on a body already collapsing from the weight

and grief found me there

because healing is cruel before it is freeing

first it forces you
to mourn the version of yourself
who thought suffering was the price of love

i was the girl who stayed too long
who made herself smaller
just to avoid being abandoned

the one who would have burned alive
just to keep you warm

and suddenly
the fire stopped looking romantic

it looked hungry

it looked merciless

it looked like every moment
i betrayed myself
hoping you would finally choose me back

so i stepped away

shaking
heartbroken
still loving
still grieving

but finally understanding

that love was never supposed
to require my disappearance

so i stopped burning

not because i stopped feeling

but because i finally understood

i deserved so much more
than learning how to survive the flames

i deserve a love that does not
try to turn me into ash

JMS