We Were Not the Ones

We were sixteen.

She had the broken gaze of someone who wanted to fly.

I had dirt and rage in my hands.

We met at the corner where the world

never dared to look us in the eye.

Her parents spoke of the future

like it was a stained inheritance made of gold.

All I had were words

and a body that didn’t yet know

how to defend itself from names

given by strangers.

They forbade her to look at me.

Took her phone.

Filled her ears with warnings,

as if love were a disease

and I, her first symptom.

She cried without sound.

I learned to scream in silence.

We saw each other one last time behind the school.

Ten minutes.

A promise we didn’t know how to keep.

A kiss that didn’t ask for permission.

A goodbye too raw to name.

Now she walks in different clothes,

with a smile I no longer recognize,

and eyes that learned to obey.

I’m still here,

same dirty hands,

but now I know love isn’t always freedom.

Sometimes it’s a shared cage.

Other times, a crime with no witnesses.

They didn’t let us be.

And maybe we wouldn’t have made it.

But...

We were not the ones who failed.

They were the ones who never knew how to love.