Quillbound

If you never read this,
I’ll still mean every word.
In the silence I gave you,
I hope your voice is heard.

I broke something soft,
something fragile, something true—
Not with fists, not with fire,
but with the way I spoke to you.

Sleep has escaped me,
and with it, my mind—
Five nights of chaos
left no kindness behind.

But this,
right now,
is not a haze.
It’s not an excuse
or a passing phase.

You can go.
You can stay.
You can take all the days—
I won’t beg you to talk
or pull you my way.

I was selfish.
I asked you to stay
when I should’ve just
let you walk away.

And when I said
I didn’t need you—
what I meant
was I chose you.

Not for comfort,
not for ease,
but because in a world full of people
you made me feel seen.

When you said not to fall,
something cracked in my chest.
I smiled like it was nothing,
but my lungs did the rest—
shrank inside themselves,
like they knew what was next.

I don’t know what I want.
I don’t know if this is love.
But I know that I care,
more than I ever thought of.

So if you leave,
I’ll carry no hate—
just a quiet kind of hope
that you find someone great.

And if you stay,
I’ll be better.
Not perfect,
but real.

And maybe one day,
you’ll know how I feel.