Where my heart broke
As I cried into your chest,
I felt something inside me begin to loosen.
Not my love for you.
Never that.
But the anger I had been carrying.
The frustration that had settled into my bones.
The sadness that had made a home in my heart.
The pain I had hidden for far too long.
With every tear,
my words of anger and self-hatred settled like dust.
They no longer stormed through my mind.
They simply drifted downward,
covering the silence between us
and the parts of me
that had forgotten what peace felt like.
Every tear felt like I was setting
a little of it down.
Then I looked up
and saw you quietly wipe away your tears.
You kept patting my back,
softly repeating,
“It’s okay.”
But it wasn’t okay.
It wasn’t okay
that I had to cry like this.
It wasn’t okay
that the safest place I knew
had become the place
I brought my deepest hurt.
It wasn’t okay
that the person holding me together
was also the reason
I had fallen apart.
As you held me,
I realized I wasn’t crying
because I wanted to punish you.
I was crying
because my heart
could no longer carry
everything it had been holding.
I wanted you to see
what I had never found the words to say.
Not so you would feel my pain
but so you would understand it.
Because I never wanted
this moment between us.
I never wanted a love
that needed tears
to explain itself.
As my tears began to dry,
I stayed there,
my head still resting against your chest.
I closed my eyes,
not because the pain had faded,
but because I didn’t have the strength
to keep looking at it.
For a moment,
the world became quiet.
All I could hear
was your heartbeat,
steady beneath my ear,
while mine searched
for a rhythm
it no longer recognized.
I wanted to believe
that your embrace
could stitch together
everything that had come undone.
I wanted to believe
that if I stayed there
just a little longer,
my heart would forget
what it had learned.
But deep down,
I knew it wouldn’t.
Because pain like this
doesn’t leave
when the tears stop.
It settles.
It waits.
It lingers
in the quiet spaces
between heartbeats.
I knew
that when I finally
lifted my head,
the pain
would rise with me.
It would follow me home.
It would lie beside me
when I tried to sleep.
It would greet me again
when morning came.
So I closed my eyes
for just a little longer,
trying to memorize
the sound of your heartbeat,
hoping that somehow
it could quiet
the ache inside mine.
I only wanted
the kind of love
where I cried
because I was overwhelmed
with happiness…
Not because I was mourning
the future
I thought
we were already living.