The Wrong Hands

I gave you everything.

Not in grand gestures, not in fireworks or diamonds,

but in the quiet ways.

I gave you the marrow of my bones,

the softness of my hours,

the endless, tireless turning of myself toward you.

Love was supposed to be a lantern,

but with you it became a furnace.

I fed it my breath, my body, my fragile joy, and still it demanded more.

Still you demanded more.

You took until I was hollow,

until my reflection looked back at me like a stranger,

eyes dimmed, mouth silent, hands shaking with the weight of all they carried.

This is the cruelty of love misplaced;

what begins as salvation can become a slow undoing.

Giving, when poured into the wrong hands, is not a gift but a sacrifice,

an altar where only one walks away whole.

However, I cannot hate love itself, because even in ruins,

I remember its sweetness.

Even as I gather the shards of myself, bleeding as I go,

I know it was never wrong to give.

What was wrong, was you.