there is a creature they see, a rough-cut thing of splinters and scorn, and they have named it well. they call it asshole, they call it jerk, and the words fit the mask so perfectly they never think to check for the face beneath. they see the slamming door, but not the hand that trembles on the knob. they hear the corrosive remark, expertly aimed to maim, but are deaf to the silent, screaming algebra that calculated it — a preemptive strike against a rejection that feels as inevitable as sunrise. i am my own first victim, and they are merely collateral damage in a war i am fighting against ghosts they cannot see.

my language of care is silence. my act of devotion is a steadfast, unyielding presence. but the world does not trade in such quiet currency. it demands loud, performative love; it requires the easy poetry of appreciation spilled freely from the tongue. my tongue, however, is a ruined city, its bridges burned long ago in a different war. the words are there, but the passage for them is blocked by the rubble of old betrayals, the landmines of trust that once exploded and left everything cratered. to speak them would be to step onto that fatal ground again, and my soul flinches backward, choosing the safety of solitude over the risk of that devastation.

and so the creature grows, fed by their valid disappointment and my own impotent regret. i am a prisoner of a history i never chose, performing a pantomime of coldness for an audience that cannot know the script was written by absent hands. i see the hurt i cause, and that hurt becomes another brick in the wall, another reason i am unfit for the gentle, open-handed commerce of human affection. i am sorry, endlessly sorry in a vault of my own making, but the apology is just another thing i cannot say, another failure to be added to the ledger. they see a monster, and i see the man who failed to tame the shadows that made him one, and we are both, in our own ways, right.