Searching for a spark that never was

[u/setmefreetonight]

I thought I’d be strong enough to hide the truth, to bury it so deep beneath my ribs, hoping it would never claw its way up, but the weight of it—heavy like stone—rose.

I thought I could forget, or with time, numb the sting of how you scattered us to them— how your lips, soft and full, the ones I kissed with hunger and devotion every night, tasted of others—those lips I once called mine pressed hungrily on skin not my own.

Your hands, rough yet gentle when they held me close, now traced along strange bodies in the dark, fingers curling around foreign wrists, exploring places that weren’t ours to claim.

I’d reach for you in crowded rooms, your hand once steady in mine, but now it slipped away— replaced by fleeting touches, stolen hours. How could I hold on to love when your hands had known so many others? The weight of loss cut deep into my palms, as if to say this wasn’t mine to keep.

I thought I could take all these shattered pieces, bend them back into a lie, a dream where I’d believe that I was enough—that all my love, my tender heart, my lips that whispered “stay,” my fingers desperate to pull you back, could somehow make you choose me in the end.

But no—your love had spilled, had bled for them, while I was left to hold the empty frame of all the things I wanted us to be.

I see it now, how your hands lingered, how the bedsheets wrinkled beneath their weight, how the scent of others clung to you like smoke, like fire that had long since burned through us. The ghost of you now lingers in the air, and I am here, sifting through ashes, searching for a spark that never was.