My Heart Lost its Spark

My heart lost its spark

the day the fire learned its name

and the world decided it shouldn’t burn.

You were too young, they said,

as if age were a fence

and not a season.

As if the way you looked at me

hadn’t already crossed every border

I’d spent years pretending mattered.

I didn’t go looking for you.

That’s the part no one believes.

You happened to me

like warmth on cold hands,

like breath after holding it too long.

You saw me.

Not the version I perform,

not the man I explain away,

but the quiet center

I’d almost forgotten was still alive.

You listened without preparing a verdict.

You laughed without measuring the cost.

You loved without needing me

to be simpler, smaller, or safer.

With you, my heart remembered

what it was built for.

It sparked,

not loud or reckless,

but steady and alive,

like embers finding oxygen.

And that’s when the voices came.

Eyes narrowed.

Whispers sharpened.

Concern dressed up as virtue.

They didn’t ask how we felt.

They told us how it looked.

So we did the responsible thing.

The adult thing.

The thing people clap for quietly

and call maturity.

We stepped away.

You first.

Then me.

The fire didn’t explode.

It didn’t rage.

It simply went out.

Now my heart still beats,

still works,

still does what it’s supposed to do.

But it does it in the dark.

I move through days

remembering what warmth felt like,

what it meant to be understood

without translation,

to be loved without apology.

They say time heals.

Maybe.

But some sparks

don’t come back as flames.

Some just leave behind

a cold, clean memory

of light.