The Haunting

You held my soul in your hand, and slowly clenched your first squeezing ever so fearlessly, as if my light were something soft, something you could mold or mute.

I felt the tremor of my own unraveling, a thousand small deaths blooming beneath your touch. Each one whispered: this is what love is not.

You mistook my silence for surrender, my patience for weakness, my tears for your triumph.

But even as your grip tightened, something ancient inside me stirred; a pulse beneath the bruises, a whisper in the marrow saying rise.

You see, destruction is an art, but so is rebirth. And when you cracked me open, I learned what it means to build myself from the dust.

I gathered each fragment; the forgotten laugh, the buried spark, the pieces you tried to claim and forged the into something you could never hold again.

Now, I walk through the wreckage without trembling. My scars hum softly, like strings of a harp, each note a reminder; I survived the squeeze.

You held my soul once, but never again. For I have learned that healing is not forgiving the hand that broke you, it's reclaiming the power that hand feared most; your light.