My Refined Version
My refined version only you deserved it— Not the fragmented drafts I handed out to passing souls, Not the hurried sentences stitched together from loneliness and late-night confessions that meant nothing by morning, But the slow, deliberate language of a heart that had finally learned the cost of being read carelessly. I would have given you the pauses too— Those sacred silences between words where truth breathes without performance, Where touch does not beg for validation and love is not measured in how loudly it announces itself, But in how gently it stays. You would have known me in my unedited form, Not the diluted metaphors I scattered like loose change, Not the half-felt affections I mistook for depth, But the full-bodied ache of a soul that writes only when it means it, That stays only where it is seen, Where it is felt, Where it is valued and understood. Because with you, I would not have negotiated my worth in fragments, Would not have bartered sincerity for temporary war...
