By PC A
Ten years of holding space and calling it home
A home which was surviving own it's own .
Just made of half said words and unleashed thoughts in which you swriled along .
Not once did you ask what kept me quiet because you never cared .
you just filled in the blank with your own recurring doubts .
Not once did you wonder what i feel about love .
Hence you labelled me whatever came to your mind just because I couldn't perform the first night .
A label ,a judgement you passed.
My wreck isn’t just in the memory
it lived in like the sting of trying not to believe of what you said .
Love is not a fantasy it's a real work ,where you are gentle and care .
But intimacy to you was about those reels i guess .
I am sorry my body didn't perform on the orders you gave because intimacy to me was more about feeling butterflies in my stomach and smiling alone .
I wanted it slow ,feel safe
before I give you more .
But instead of holding that space,
you held judgment.
Instead of meeting my need,
you labeled my lack.
And now i don't know how to defend the way my love,
the way I give,the way I simply…
Am.
All this while I thought it's love on your face
the smiles, the soft mornings,
the glimpses I clung to for so long .
But they were they just shadows,
Reflections casted on a the wall.
Because I gave love from a place of hope.
I stayed through the droughts,
through silence that bruised me,
through touches that left me emptier
than the loneliness itself.
I stitched myself into our story
while you watched from a distance,
already writing diaries ,a verson of yours .
where my love was soft and too slow ,
I couldn't match up with your fantasies.
It took me time to realise that my performance mattered over my presence .
And now I know what it meant
when you said to someone
who patted on your back saying
so you are a married man now ,
so you replied with a shrug and deny .
That
“Another one bites the dust.”
Back then,it felt like a passing line .
Maybe a joke you both shared about.
But now I see it for what it was -
Prohency soaked in ugly remarks you made
Because that's how you treat the one , that's what I deserved ?
Love to you look like
a battlefield where tenderness is weakness,
where loyalty is just another casualty.
I was never your partner but a test .
A statistical analysis in your silent war,
against vulnerability i held and
knowledge you never had .
You didn’t want to build,you wanted to conquer.
You didn’t want to understand ,
You needed a yes in everything.
So yes—
nowi feel I did bite the dust for sure .
Not because I was weak,
but because I stood too long in the fire of your denial, Sinking too deep in your environment.
Now I know
why you wanted to lose me,
why your eyes didn’t light up
when I said, “We’re having a baby.”
You smiled for the world,
but not for us.
Not for me.
Now I know
why my joy felt unwelcomed
in our own home—
why I tiptoed around my own feelings,
around your moods and around what should’ve been
ours.
You didn’t celebrate me but played along.
You didn’t hold space for my becoming,
Because it wasn't according to your convenience.
I didn’t know you were the same—
maybe even worse than the ones I feared,
the ones I fought to unlearn.
Because they never promised me better.
But you did.
And still—you couldn’t speak the truth,
couldn’t sit in the discomfort of a real conversation,
couldn’t ask, couldn’t see me !
I wonder—
what proof should I provide?
Where you can watch me perform while i look into those beautiful eyes,
Eyes that expect without offering clarity.
Eyes that devour,but never understand.
But I must dance through pain
just to be called woman?
You called my love lacking
because it didn’t come with noise and heat.
because it came quietly and truthfully.
But you never knew how to receive
something that asked nothing in return.
You traded off this feeling for so long,
as if love came with an expiry and
I am a thing
Which you can be used and returned .
You adjusted me
like furniture into corners of silence,
into routines that served you,
into a life where I became
a slave to your pain.
Your pain came from a place I never touched.
A strange inheritance from your birthplace,
from wounds you never named,
handed to me like a babies .
And I not knowing anything better
i took them all .
Rocking them into my days,
fed them with my gentleness,
Not knowing that you wanted
something more.
Without any hesitation you went ahead
To label me , defining me in your own term .
You called me something I am not.
Because it was easier to accuse than to ask.
Easier to judge than to understand.
You chose a tag .
I understand now,
why I never felt settled in your arms,
not in our home, not even in the mirror
you held up .
Because the need you had was never love—
not the kind I knew, not the kind I offered.
And for not matching it,
For not blending myself into what pleased you
I was recklessly strangled by your mean words.
Words that questioned my womanhood,
my very being .
But it wasn’t my failure to love.
It was your refusal to receive anything
that didn’t serve you well .
I never knew i would be judged
by how good I am in the bed.
But if I had known, if someone had told
this was the test I have to pass .
I might have played the part,
arched my back to match your thrust.
But you still would have never seen the love.
Because love was never what you were looking for.