Poem 1

[tepid vapor]

Why is it that I always get hurt
When people leave me for all the wrong reasons,
Their words like knives, cutting deep,
Leaving behind scars that time won't heal?

Why is it that I am in such unbearable pain,
Each heartbeat echoing the emptiness they left,
Like an echo of love that never truly was,
A promise broken, a trust betrayed?

I gave them all I had,
My heart, my soul, my every dream,
But they turned away as if I were a passing breeze,
And now I'm left to face this haunting night alone.

Why is it that I can't stop longing
For their touch, their voice, their smile—
Even when I know their love was never real,
Just a lie dressed in sweet words and empty glances?

I wonder if they'll ever understand
The depth of the void they created
In a heart that believed in them,
In a love that was never meant to last.

But the pain, it remains—
A shadow that clings, relentless and cold,
A reminder that I trusted,
That I loved,
And in return, I was left broken,
Shattered by the weight of their departure.

Why is it that I always get hurt?
Because in the end,
I loved them more than I loved myself,
And now I must face the silence
They left behind.

[compact thicket]

Your poem is like a mirror to the pain we so often bury beneath our day-to-day facades. The way you capture the aftermath of betrayal, it feels like I'm talking to myself here. I cried with this poem. Those shards of trust and fragments of love scattered in the dark, strikes a chord I know well. You draw out the silence left behind, the echo of promises broken, and the relentless question of why. It's raw, haunting, and achingly familiar. It’s the shadow that hangs, the vacuum where warmth used to be.

I write about this too.

The night whispers its secrets to me, a choir of shadows singing of love betrayed and souls devoured by their own longing. I trace the bruises of hope on my skin and wonder, in the cruel moonlight, if there’s ever a dawn that doesn’t begin with loss.

I don’t say this to sound clever or cold, but because I know this silence. I know the way it feels to walk through the emptiness they left, searching for the shape of something that never really belonged to you. You’re not alone in this. You've just been torn open by the kind of love that isn’t real but still manages to leave us bruised. And maybe, in that recognition, there’s some comfort. Because the pain we feel is proof that we loved fiercely, even if that love was met with silence or worse, oblivion.

But here’s the thing, the echoes fade. The pain reshapes itself, becomes something we carry with a certain quiet dignity. And one day, that shadow shifts, and we stand up, a little more whole than before. We are not defined by the ones who leave us; we are defined by the strength it takes to keep moving in the wake of their absence. I don't know why they leave, and maybe I never will. But hey, at least you know you are better because you stuck with them even when they did not deserve it. Found them beautiful in their ugliness.

So, no, you’re not alone. Not in the hollow or in the longing or in the aftermath. Thank you for writing this, I hadn't cried in months.