There’s a certain kind of love that feels like a trap masquerading as tenderness. It’s the love that hurts, but you keep returning to it. Not because you enjoy the pain, but because somewhere along the way, you started believing it was the price of being wanted. You call them home, a place of safety, of belonging—but to them, you’re chaos, a mirror to their discomfort. Still, you stay. You hope. You make me dance, I sway to your tune, then shoo me away when I look at you.
It’s the push-and-pull, the dizzying cycle of intimacy followed by indifference. You find yourself molding to their moods, bending into versions of yourself that feel foreign. All just to be near them. But love that demands performance isn’t love—it’s power. And you’re losing yourself in the choreography. You need a reason, I stand here free, so I commit treason—your sins fall on me.
You carry the blame, quietly. For their outbursts, their withdrawal, their emotional distance. You forgive what you shouldn’t, excusing cruelty as confusion. You absorb it all, because they never asked to be loved like this, and you—well, you never stopped offering more than they could return.
Here lies my elegy, my whispered plea, a prayer unanswered—won’t you love me?
It becomes a soft begging, a daily heartbreak wrapped in silence. You don’t scream or demand—you just wish. You wish they’d see you. You wish the moments of warmth weren’t followed by frost. You wish they’d choose you, freely and without hesitation. But they don’t The petals I tore now litter my floor, they whisper “yes,” but they’ve lied before.
Love-me-not. Love-me. Not. The game you play with yourself every night, searching for signs. Reading between silences. Taking scraps and calling it affection. But petals lie. They’re delicate, like you’ve become—bruised and bleeding, still pretending it’s a garden. My tears pave the way for you to drift away, and as I crumble, you make me stay.
You build bridges with your pain, hoping they’ll walk back to you across the tears. But they only come to collect what you’ve left of yourself at their feet. They see your collapse and call it devotion. They never stay for you—only for what you offer. Love, comfort, access. Never presence. You watch the cracks, the breaking core, yet just as it shatters, you ask for more.
And still, they reach out. Not to hold you together, but to see how far you can fall before you vanish. They’ve grown accustomed to your sacrifice, to your silence. Every crack they ignore is another place you disappear. How much of me must I erase, before you see me, before you stay?
You ask this in the quiet, in the mirror, in the messages you never send. The answer comes in the form of your exhaustion. How much more can you offer before there’s nothing left of you? And would they even notice your absence—or only mourn the lack of convenience?
But love should not be begged or borrowed, nor built on silence, steeped in sorrow.
That’s the truth we learn too late. That love should be a choice, not a test. It should not cost you your peace or your voice. It should not be a place where you have to beg for gentleness or barter with pieces of your soul.
So take what you need, my hands are bare, and when I am nothing—will you still be there?