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 warmth,

Would not have mistaken attention for intimacy.

I would have arrived whole,

Like a poem that does not apologize for its length,

or, its intensity,

or, the way it dares to be remembered.

And perhaps that is the tragedy—

Not that I love you too much,

But, that I met you

after learning how to love properly,

After becoming a version of myself

that no longer knew how to be taken lightly.

By then you left!

You never stayed long enough

to read me till the end.

Light never won in the pacifics, perhaps! 

©® Farheen Akter Bhuian Nancy 

Timestamp: 2.26 pm, T-4