I learned terror in the curve of your lips,  

the way your warmth became a switchblade,  

glinting in the half-light of our good mornings.

You held me like sunlight—  

steady pulse in my veins—  

then snapped like winter glass,  

shattering every trust I built.

Now my heart rehearses the betrayal  

in the quiet between breaths,  

hypervigilant for the flicker  

of kindness gone cold.

I wake with my pulse still echoing  

that moment you turned,  

as if love itself can flip a switch  

and leave me stranded in darkness.

My hands tremble at every caress,  

searching for the trigger  

that could snap me back to fear,  

rewrite safety as fiction.

I carry PTSD in my spine,  

tremors in my laughter,  

an echo of your leaving  

haunting even my dreams.

And still I learn to unbend,  

to trust a dawn undimmed,  

to believe that warmth can stay  

even when the switch remains untouched.