Guilt, and What It Left Behind

Sometimes

it arrives without warning —

not loud,

not violent,

but heavy...

like a quiet ache

settling deep beneath my ribs,

as if my body remembers

what my mind tries

to soften.

I replay the moments

I wish I could gather back

into my hands —

the sharpness in my voice,

the way my words

cut through you

before I even understood

what I was doing.

There were times

I made you feel small —

when all you ever offered me

was a love

that asked for nothing

but to be held gently.

And still,

I bruised it.

I see it now —

how pride stood between us

like a wall I refused to lower,

how I withheld softness

as if it were something

to be earned.

I pushed you away

just far enough

to see if you would follow,

never realizing

love is not meant to prove itself

through pursuit.

And in the quiet —

those late, unguarded hours —

I wake with the truth of it:

the things I said,

the things I twisted,

the moments I made you feel

as though you were not enough…

when it was I

who did not yet know

how to hold love

without breaking it.

Guilt does not undo the past.

It does not return you

to the doorway

or give me back the version of us

that once existed

before I fractured it.

But it stays —

not as punishment,

but as a mirror.

A quiet, unwavering reminder

of who I was

when I did not yet understand

the weight of my own hands.

And so I will not let it consume me.

I will carry it carefully —

only as far as it teaches me

how to become softer,

truer,

more whole.

Because I cannot reach back

into what has already been —

but I can step forward

as someone who knows now

that love is not something to test,

but something to protect.