poetry ☾

I will lie bare before you.
Not naked.
Emptied.

Skin like a question I don’t answer.
Breath held longer than is safe.

Your hands hover, then decide.
I meet your eyes and do not leave,
even when every part of me wants to.

Your fingers peel away
not skin,
but the names I learned to survive under.
The exits I kept ready.
The version of me that disappears early.

I do not stop you.
I do not reach for what I lose.

I let myself come apart
the way something tired finally does.

If I am quieter after this,
smaller,
less defended,

let it be because I stayed.

Let it be because I chose
to be unmade
where I was once afraid to be seen.