she took the warmth
some stories aren’t told all at once. they unfold in glances, pauses, a name almost spoken, a touch that meant more than it should have.
she took the warmth, not the love
she always came back when the nights got cold.
not for the love. just the way I touched her without needing to ask. the way I looked at her like I already knew what she was trying to hide.
she said I made her feel safe. wanted. undone.
but only in secret.
the softness I offered in between breakups, bad nights, and a name she never said aloud.
she would linger just long enough to drink from what I didn’t speak, then leave to offer her fire to someone else who never saw her the way I did.
once, she traced her finger over my wrist — stopped. smiled like she remembered something I never told her.
she told me the world wouldn’t understand. and I knew what she meant. not with words, but with the hush that followed when her body leaned in but her name disappeared from mine.
I was never her home. just the pause between hunger and forgetting.
and maybe that’s all we ever were — a breath between verses, a note that trembled after the song was done.
something I still hear in the silence like a key no one else ever found.
