You

Written during the time I had a panic attack after seeing you again. I should have closed my eyes and run away. I hate myself for looking, for keeping my eyes on you and fearing the worst all over again, and fearing I have to relieve it all over again - which I might not survive this time. When will the world stop feeling like a graveyard?

Perhaps the you I see

was never meant for this world—

a ghost spun from longing,

woven from the quiet ache of dreams.

You exist somewhere beyond my reach,

not within you, not within anyone,

only in the hush between what was

and what will never be.

Still, I hold him in the night,

fingers clutching at the specter of something

never meant to be mine.

I whisper to myself: he is not you.

He just looks and sounds like you,

but he isn't the you that hits and hurts me.

I chant it like a prayer, a ward, a curse.

But what good are words

against the weight of memory?

Against the cruel trick of your voice,

your face, your hands—

the ones that once held me

and the ones that now break me?

I will mourn the years I will never have with you,

the chance to never grow old with you as we once planned,

more than anything,

I grieve for the days of childhood—

when the world shimmered like sunlit water,

when color bled unbridled into the sky,

before it all faded to dust and shadow.

And yet, if I could steal just one moment,

I would trade eternity

to stand once more beside you,

to love you harder,

to hold you together before the fractures spread,

before I too began to splinter.

But tell me—why must I love you still?

Why must I kneel at the altar of your cruelty,

offering my trembling hands

to a man-god who does not hear prayers?

If what we felt was the same thing,

why was it so easy to freeze your heart

but my crippled, wounded, barely functioning one

still values what we had?

When you hurt me or see me suffer,

why doesn't it cross your minds the times I made you smile or held you?

I remember the times you did even when you trample me beneath your feet.

Perhaps you feel something for me,

but I know you possess no human feeling or sympathy for me.

If I die today, you might laugh, I know.

But if you died, I would have preferred to be dead too or in your place.

If I were you, I wouldn't be able to even raise my hand if I saw pain in your eyes.

I don’t pretend to be your victim.

I am my own victim because I keep choosing you

even when you made it clear you despise me.

I still yearn for your presence,

even if it is only to have you kick me.

And I’ll never know why.

If I meant nothing to me,

I wish you meant the same to me too so this life would be easier.

I'm just not strong enough to carry this burden

Of loving you for a lifetime.

I don't mind your hits

if in the end, you would embrace me when you calmed down.

But you don’t.

You get angrier and hit me harder,

making me black and blue.

I wish your hits could have struck the love I have for you out of me too.

Because now it's a debilitating disease that kills me and angers you.

I wish I was never born because you hate me so much.

If I ever made you smile even once,

why doesn’t that cross your mind

when you hurt me on purpose?

And why does every good thing you ever did for me

flash in my mind even when you kick me,

when you trample me?

Is there a worse or more frightening feeling in the world,

when you know the one you love

wouldn’t even flinch while hurting you?

When you want to share it all with just one person,

who wouldn’t even believe a word you say?

Who will not believe they wounded you

even if they see you bleeding in front of them?

To have to avoid and run away

from the person you want to be comforted by?

And still I keep seeing that kindness in you even if you don't show it,

While you accuse me of villainizing you,

I wish I wasn't delusional to believe the best in you when you try to show me your worst.

If that's all you felt me for,

I'm sorry you had to meet me.

Wish our paths never crossed,

than for you to feel more sympathy

for a biting snake over me.

All I want is if you had

a tiny bit of kindness, softness, and love left for me.

That your heart would feel pain

as much as an ant's bite seeing me suffer.

Why were your sorry's for hurting me just few words

And never trying to actively comfort me,

But you have a book on everything I did wrong and how you would never forgive me,

And curse me for several lifetimes.

All I wish for is if you had

a minuscule amount of love left for me.

If I loved you so little,

I wouldn't have been taking your worst just to stay in your presence.

But that's something you won't understand.

I wish you were right.

I wish I didn’t feel anything for you.

I would have been free,

and you would hold no power to rip me apart and destroy me.

I wish I didn’t want to give up everything I own

just for you to have a shred of sympathy,

to have a tiny space in your heart as my home.

But everything I own is worthless,

because you wish me dead.

I wish I was too.

Perhaps you would be relieved if I was dead,

and I always want your wishes to come true.

Looking at you terrifies me.

Not because of what you might do,

but because I know, deep in my marrow,

that you can do something that would hurt me

without a thought and laugh coldly afterwards.

Do you know what you do to me?

How easily you become the storm

that drowns me in tides of yesterday?

Without hesitation,

without even realizing,

you turn me into something small,

something breakable,

something desperate.

I cannot breathe.

I cannot move.

My chest tightens, my pulse riots—

panic a noose around my throat

as I wait for the next blow,

the next assault of words, the next silence.

Because silence is a wound too,

an unbearable kind,

one that festers in the spaces

where love should have been.

I am drowning in panic,

lungs full of water you poured,

and you—standing on the shore—

do not even notice.

Or maybe you do,

and you just don’t care.

I wish I did not exist,

if only so you would not despise me so.

I wish I could unsee you,

unwrite you from the pages of my veins,

unravel you from my bones.

I wish I could erase all my memories of you,

I'm sure you couldn't care less.

Because whatever we felt lost its meaning to you.

But love, merciless and unyielding,

has made a home of my ruin,

a prisoner of my own life.

You hate love,

and I have learned to hate it too.

I wish I didn’t.

Your hands should have taught me enough,

your silence should have been enough,

but still, I remain,

still, I ache,

still, I wait.

And I wish I didn't.

How many times must you break me

before I learn that your heart has no place for me?

How many wounds must I endure

before I understand that my suffering

would not even make you flinch?

I thought if I bore it all—

if I swallowed every storm,

if I withstood every strike—

perhaps I could carve myself a little space within you.

But even if you remember me,

it is only in the dimmest corners of your mind,

where love does not linger,

where I am only a shadow—

a ghost of something once known,

but never cherished.

I close my eyes and dream of the you that does not hurt me,

the one who is soft, who is kind,

who gathers my sorrow in gentle hands.

But dreams are copium.

And safe is not something I feel with you anymore.

I brace myself for the next storm,

for the next rupture,

for the next earth-shattering moment

when I can't recognize you anymore,

for the moment your rage will spill over again.

I have come to expect it,

like winter expecting the fall of snow.

I wish you had held me instead.

I wish striking me had drained your fury,

but it never does—

and I am left to wonder

what more I must give

just to linger in the smallest corner of your heart.

We are embracing.

I’m holding you tight.

My tears stain your cheeks,

your spit adorns mine.

What if we could forgive each other for the ways we hurt?

Would you want to know me all over again,

and tell me your name,

and we would meet as strangers with a blank slate?

I wish we had a different fate.

I wish we never met,

just to spare you of the hate.

© 2025 Inaba Tarek