Golden Words and a Burnt Tongue

By [Hazrat ali]

Golden Words and a Burnt Tongue

— A Story of Sweet Promises, Silent Pain, and Learning Not to Swallow Every Beautiful Lie

I used to believe in the weight of words—how they could anchor or lift, heal or destroy. The right words, I thought, were magic spells. And when he spoke, it was like honey warming on the stove: slow, golden, sweet. Too sweet.

He told me I was the sun, the light that made things bloom. He said I was strong but soft, rare like spring rain after drought. His compliments dripped with elegance, crafted like poems—just enough to make me lean in, but never enough to let me rest.

I remember the way I clung to those words, the way I savored them like nectar. I memorized them, rewrote them in journals, repeated them to myself on nights when he didn’t text back or when silence sat beside me like a ghost. I swallowed his words whole, not realizing they were too hot, too sharp, too layered with his own hunger.

And I? I burned quietly.

Not the kind of burn that scorches all at once, but the slow singe of a tongue pressed too long against heat. It was subtle. Hidden. Like how your mouth feels raw the next morning and you can’t quite remember why.

I started shrinking around his golden phrases—making myself smaller so they’d fit better, so I wouldn’t ruin the magic. I thought maybe if I didn’t ask for too much, the sweetness would return. Maybe if I was easier to love, his words wouldn’t come laced with guilt. Or worse, vanish.

He never raised his voice. He didn’t need to. He had his language: polished, poised, and powerful. He could hurt with a compliment, disappoint with a smile. The worst heartbreak I ever felt came wrapped in tenderness.

“You’re amazing,” he’d say, just before forgetting my birthday.

“I’ve never met anyone like you,” just before disappearing for a week.

“You deserve more,” he'd whisper—never offering to be it.

At first, I defended him. “He’s just busy.” “He means well.” “He’s never said anything cruel.” And that was the trick. He didn’t have to be cruel to cause damage. He just had to leave me thirsty in a desert he promised was a garden.

The day I realized I was burning was the day I stopped writing down his words. I had read them enough. They were carved into the corners of my doubt, glowing falsely in the dark. I started listening not to what he said, but what he did.

And what he did was nothing.

He didn’t show up when it counted. He didn’t call when I broke down. He didn’t hold space for my voice, just filled the air with his own. He was eloquent, sure—but empty.

That’s when I understood: golden words aren’t always golden truths. Sometimes they’re just distractions—shiny enough to blind you from the quiet ache of being unloved.

So I stopped swallowing his honey-coated promises. I spit out the sweetness and rinsed the burn. I went quiet, not out of defeat, but healing. I filled my silence with honesty, with messy truth, with friends who didn’t need poetry to love me. I learned to love the taste of real.

And then one day, he called.

He said he missed my energy. My light. My understanding. He said he thought about me all the time. His voice dripped with all the same sugar.

But I had learned.

“I used to think your words meant something,” I told him, steady as stone. “But now I know they only sounded beautiful because I was starving.”

He was quiet. And for once, so was I—no longer aching to be understood, no longer begging to be chosen.

Because sometimes, healing is not about saying anything back.

It’s about refusing to taste the same lie twice.

It’s about letting your tongue rest.

Letting your silence speak.

Letting yourself be full on your own terms.