You Take Beyond What I Can Give

You come to me with open hands like I'm a well that never runs dry, like my body is an endless supply of warmth and patience and forgiveness. You drink and drink and drink, and when I say I'm empty, you look at me like I'm lying, like I'm holding out on you. I have given you my softness, my last reserves of tenderness, the parts of myself I needed to survive. I scraped myself hollow trying to fill you, poured everything I had into your cupped palms and watched it leak through your fingers like it was nothing. And still you come back asking for more. There's a violence in the way you take, not with fists, but with need, the kind that doesn't see me as a person but as a resource to be mined until I collapse. You've mistaken my care for weakness, my love for an invitation to devour me completely. But I'm not your salvation. I'm not your medicine. I'm just bone-tired and bleeding out. So here's what I have left to give you: NOTHING. Not anger, not explanations, not one more chance. Just this boundary, this wall I'm building with the broken pieces of myself you left behind. You can beat against it all you want, I won't open the door. I won't let you in to finish what you started. I am keeping the last of me for myself, the embers you didn't manage to extinguish, the small animal part of me that still wants to live. And when you come crawling back, when you realize you need me more than I ever needed you, I'll be the one watching you starve. I'll be the closed door, the dry well, the empty room. You take beyond what I can give, so now I'll take back what you stole, my peace, my softness, my open heart, and I'll watch you learn what it means to reach for warmth and find only teeth.