You don’t even know my favorite flower Bleeding hearts, in quiet bowers. They bloom like sorrow, soft and red, Like all the tears I never said. They hang like secrets never told, In gardens quiet, damp, and cold. You speak like you have known my song, But miss the verses buried long. You talk like you’ve seen all my days, But missed the years I lost in haze. A childhood cracked, a voice gone small I learned too young to hide it all. You think you know what makes me bloom But not the silence in my room, The way I flinched at voices raised, Or how I wandered, half erased. Bleeding hearts they called to me, In their soft and solemn dignity. A flower shaped like aching truth, Like stolen light from stolen youth. So no, you don’t know what I adore, Not petals, not roots. Not me. Not before. You see what's left, but not the start You never learned my bleeding heart.