Flying Away from You
Butterflies are beautiful creatures.
Delicate, light, free.
But it doesn’t take much to ruin them:
touch their wings too roughly,
and they can no longer fly.
I was like that.
A butterfly, right in the middle of my awakening.
I had just learned to love my freedom,
to spread my wings,
to choose the sky.
And then you arrived.
Too tired to fly,
too envious to let me go.
And so, I stopped.
I landed exactly where I shouldn’t have:
in your web.
A trap made of sweet words and half-truths.
You disguised yourself as shelter,
while slowly spinning your threads around me.
Your lies were invisible threads,
your manipulations tight knots around my mind.
You made me doubt myself.
You made me believe I was the unstable one,
too much, too emotional, wrong.
That my sensitivity was a flaw.
That my affection was a burden.
That my loneliness was my fault.
And all the while, you laughed
as I lost pieces of myself.
You turned me against the people I loved,
just to feel important.
You played with emotions,
with people,
as if they were yours to own.
You collected attention, admiration
and even that photo.
The one you still keep,
like a trophy.
A photo of me.
Not as a symbol of something beautiful,
but as proof that you’d done it
you’d caught me.
Because you didn’t want love.
You wanted power.
And I, in that moment,
was too hurt to see it.
But now, my wings aren’t broken anymore.
I’ve learned how to set myself free.
I’ve learned that love doesn’t trap you,
doesn’t confuse you,
doesn’t drain you.
I tore down your web, thread by thread.
I unlearned your rules.
And I started to fly again.
“Rules exist to be broken in order to grow,” you once wrote.
And so I did.
Only this time,
I broke them to save myself from you.