I Know I Am Wrong

It’s shameful, the way I clutch. Like a child with a broken toy, believing if I just hug it tight enough, it’ll fix itself. I know people aren’t possessions. But tell that to the part of me that has only known love as something that gets taken just when I start to believe it’s mine. I rot with envy when he smiles at someone else— not because they don’t deserve it, but because I wish I was enough to keep the sun on me. I feel foolish, needy, like a vine growing wild, twisting too tightly around something never meant to hold me. This isn’t love, maybe. This is fear in a dress made of want. This is heartbreak rehearsing hope because that’s all I’ve ever been taught: to perform, to plead, to be left. And still, I stay— because when he speaks, it feels like the walls remember my name. Because being near him hurts less than being without him. I know I am wrong, but I am honest. And maybe that’s something.