June 14, 2025
Category: Unwritten & Understood
Author’s Note:
Some things are easier to say in metaphor.
This piece isn’t about one person. It’s about what happens when silence grows heavy and stories start slipping through the cracks. When whispers grow teeth. When someone holds back the truth, not to deceive, but to protect what’s left of something that mattered.
If you’ve ever tried to stay kind while holding a match that could burn down a thousand towns…
If you’ve ever stayed quiet, not out of fear, but to spare someone pain…
If you hate gossip and wish you could torch it at the source—
You’ll feel this one.
Emotional Betrayal
In the middle of September,
I held it in my hands.
Uncertain whether it was soaked in truth or kerosene.
It didn’t matter.
Gossip is never clean.
Masterfully crafted to tear someone down,
Devotion worn like gold—
But precise enough to slide a knife between the lines.
A stab in the back,
a grip ice-cold.
It’s the betrayal of safety.
The smell of smoke.
All the hard work it took to overcome the shame.
Once the source is revealed,
You’re never the same.
Said with a grin, like it wasn’t a blow
Separate accounts. I’m the one in the hole
Like covering bills makes a heart more kind,
But martyrdom’s just control redefined.
It wasn’t the checks that told the tale;
It was power disguised beneath the veil.
Injections in the quiet,
Drawing lines in hopes they would heal.
Blooms on the sleeve,
Meant to distract or conceal.
A frame reshaped,
But the weight never leaves.
Resentment begins.
A sense of autonomy
Threatens the facade.
Shitty card to play
But it ensures things will stay, so
It’s time to start handing out matches.
Whisper by whisper,
Confidence turns to ashes.
December was too cold for a picnic.
Tomato soup to warm things up.
Clouds formed with each breath,
A history lesson about Twin Currents
But the water was already muddy.
We both played naive to death.
A warning sent,
Slipped between the lines—like a match in a sealed envelope.
Not to ignite,
Just to signal the truth.
Hoping you’d feel a chill where warmth should’ve been.
Thought you might want to know
before the hallway turned colder.
I wasn’t asking for anything.
Just trying to steady the air
So it didn’t collapse around you.
Discerning who stays quiet
And where should you run
It challenged what you thought you knew.
You panicked.
Now all that’s left,
Just the embers from what you blew.