You Liked Me Better When I Was Broken

I don’t know who this is for. It’s not what I typically write, but I know now, there is always someone out there.

So this is for you who know the feeling, but have never been able to capture it in words. It is for you who is ever yearning for love and loyalty, though surrounded by friends and buzz.

I hope you quit waiting and show up for yourself.

There are people
you will never be enough for.
They take your light
but never learn your name in full.
They clap for you
but only for the record.
They mimic safe spaces
but forge your softest truths
into weapons you didn’t see coming.

You stood for them,
by them,
with them,
yet your story is forgotten,
or footnoted at best.

With these ones,
you are in a relationship
with yourself.

And you don’t even realise it
until you wonder why
you can’t recall a single compliment
that wasn’t backhanded
or tepid.

They extend olive branches
to those who scorched you —
“It’s only fair,” they say,
“to hear both sides.”

But fairness is not the motive.
They linger,
not for love,
but because they still need
what you carry.

And they’re waiting 
silently, precisely 
to put you in your place:
an unknown in their story.

Insecurities come to all of us.
But it is the state of our heart
that decides
who we become.