“I love you”, you say with puppy eyes and reaching hands. I flinch at your touch. Sometimes your touch turns to patting, turns to punching; you knock the hope from me and bury me in a grave that reads WORTHLESS. I bite my nails till the nail beds bleed, at least they are beds I can control; where my “Yes” and “No” aren’t buried under the piled sheets of “shut up” and “forget about it”. When I first met you, you were the sun, and I fell into your rays- wrapping myself in your arms, I breathed in the warm airs of deception and gave you my soul. You set it on fire, and coated it in the cremated dust of my self-respect.

And then he came.

“I love you”, he says with compassionate eyes and hardworking he hands. I long for his touch. It is the touch that held me when I was drowning in the waves of depression, and traced the tears on my cheeks to spell YOU ARE VALUABLE. He gave me something that you will never understand, he gave me Respect and taught me wear it proudly because I deserve it. Wrapped in his arms, I have bloomed, nourished by trust and watered by communication. We are one, him and I- united, two hearts beating to the same rhythm, not because they cannot function on their own, but because together they harmonize into a symphony of strength. And when you are long gone and forgotten, blown away by the powerful winds of time, our love will remain.