21 Letters – #15 Christian (alternative)
you came to me
in the silence
after the bombs.
and for a moment,
i thought you were peace.
i mistook your ceasefire
for surrender.
your arms
for refuge.
but you were just
a grenade, a weapon
disguised as grace.
i handed you the little
i had salvaged
with shaking hands -
a shelter made of shattered walls and scarred ground,
a fragile truce
stitched together
with threadbare hope
and the ache of battles i’d barely survived.
and you…
you surveyed it
like a conquered city,
tore it down
to rebuild your own kingdom
of love.
one where i was a prisoner,
not a partner.
you were right, you know.
there is resentment.
it simmers beneath the rubble
of the hardest nights of my life,
when the world went dark
and i choked
on smoke and silence.
while i was crawling through the wreckage,
you handed me bullets,
not bandages.
i needed someone to stand beside me
as the sky fell again,
but you watched from the tower,
cold-eyed and distant,
deciding i wasn’t worth the rescue.
you turned your back.
you found another prisoner
to whisper lies to
while i sat alone in the ruins
you were creating.
and god,
that woman …
the one who meant nothing to you.
how do you betray someone
for a body
you didn’t even respect?
how do you stare into eyes
still burning with belief in you
and lie,
knowing you never saw peace
in the war you waged to get her?
it wasn’t just infidelity.
it was obliteration.
it was the scorched-earth ending
of everything sacred.
of me.
you taught me
that compassion
without armor
is a kind of suicide.
that love unreciprocated,
trying to save
someone who only ever wanted
to watch the world burn,
is just slow execution.
i saw you, Christian,
longing for peace
but addicted to war.
you became the commander
of our battle,
and when the sirens screamed
and i begged you to stand down,
you called in the missiles
and cried
as the sky rained down on us,
playing the victim
when you were the mastermind.
you didn’t want peace.
you wanted blood.
you wanted destruction.
and when the dust settled,
you wanted a monument
built from my bones.
and now,
you ask for friendship?
after the bodies,
after the craters
and the unrecognizable remnants
of who i used to be?
even if i tore down every boundary
i built to survive you,
even if i wandered back
through no man’s land
to drag you out –
you are not the kind of woman
i would ever stand beside again.
not in love.
not in loyalty.
not even in memory.
you said your father
razed everything he touched,
left beauty in ashes.
you swore you feared becoming him.
and then you did.
you sabotaged with precision,
like you'd studied it.
destroyed the good
because it exposed you.
because it made you feel
too seen.
i am healing.
but not into someone
who would ever look at you the same.
you are now
a ghost
on the battlefield.
a name i flinch at,
a scar shaped like a lesson
written in fire
and blood.
thank you,
i guess,
for showing me
what happens
when you love someone
who mistakes war
for passion.
i know now
you can’t save someone
who was born of the ashes,
only walk away
before they drag you
into the fire with them.
and so,
this is my final message.
no treaties.
no return.
burn in your own warzone.
i’m walking out
of the wreckage
alive.