I love someone who loves me deeply, someone who holds me with care, but every time his hands brush against mine, every time his eyes shine with affection, I don't see him — I see you. I see your eyes, the way they once looked into mine, your smile that I can never seem to forget, and in that moment, my heart, so carefully stitched together, breaks all over again. I whisper to myself in the quiet of my mind, I love him, not you, trying to believe it, trying to force my heart to listen. But you — you have left a wound that will not heal, you have carved your name deep into the softest part of me, and no matter how far you are, your love still clings to my ribs, it still pulls at my soul when I least expect it. You are not here, yet you haunt me, slipping into my dreams, crawling into my skin, making me tremble in the darkness of my own thoughts. My stomach knots itself into painful shapes every time I remember the way you hurt me, the way you walked away as if it all meant nothing. And still — still, I do not know why my heart betrays me and beats your name when I want it to beat for someone else. I do not want this love, I do not want these memories, I do not want the way you make me weak, the way your ghost tears through the walls I build. I try, every single day, to tell myself I love him, not you, and I will try again tomorrow, and the next day, until maybe, finally, I believe it. lai