The Love I Never Learned

I watch love bloom in others’ hands,

soft, effortless, given without a second thought.

Yet when I reach for it,

it wilts before I can hold it.

You loved in ways I could never grasp,

like whispers carried by the wind—

there, but never truly mine to hear.

Was I asking for too much?

Was I ever enough?

They say love is patient,

but I spent years waiting.

They say love is kind,

but I learned it with sharp edges.

I tried to unlearn the silence,

to rewrite the spaces you left blank.

But every hug I missed,

every soft word unsaid,

echoes in the hollow of my chest.

Did you know?

Did you ever see?

The way my hands trembled,

reaching for something that was never there?

I could scream the question into the sky,

paint it across the walls of my mind—

Why was I the one left in the cold

while warmth wrapped itself around everyone else?

But I’ve stopped searching for answers

in places that only give me wounds.

If love was never taught,

then I will teach it to myself.

I will become the arms I needed,

the voice I never heard,

the safety I never felt.

I will be the love I never learned.