The sweetness started to feel like weather.
Not warmth — warning.
The good days arrived
and I would find myself waiting
for what came after them.
Because it always came.
The explosion.
The running.
The silence.
And then back, soft,
as if nothing had been set on fire.
And I was frayed.
Of course I was frayed.
Years of it
had worn me down to wire.
But she couldn't hold that.
Couldn't sit with a man
who was tired from carrying her.
So she'd go —
not because I'd hurt her,
but because I was human
in a way she couldn't forgive.
And when she came back
there was never a sorry.
Just a reason.
The meds. The past.
The things that had been done to her
long before I arrived.
All true.
All real.
And always —
always —
pointed away from her
and at something else.
A reason is not an apology.
I learned that slowly.
Kept mistaking one for the other
long after I should have known
the difference.