There was a time
when his heart waited
for doors to open,
yearning for one glance,
one glance filled with affection,
for nearness,
for a hand that would stay
when the evening grew heavy.

The same heart now
counts the cracks in silence
and searches for reasons
to walk away
before love learns
how to wound it again.

Do not ask him
to return
with the same old tenderness.
He has spent too many seasons
sewing himself back together
with trembling hands.

He has been defeated,
not by hatred,
but by the weight
of loving too deeply
in places
that never learned to hold him.

And still, love comes—
innocent, demanding, familiar—
asking for the old fire,
the old madness,
the old surrender,
as if nothing inside him
has burned.

Life,
he is ashamed
of the scars you left on him.
Not because they are ugly,
but because they remember
everything
he tried to forgive.

Yet you keep sending him
into rooms full of mirrors,
asking him to face himself
again and again,
as though a wounded heart
should not tremble
before its own reflection.

Once,
he begged for bonds.

Now,
he searches for exits.

Perhaps this is not coldness.
Perhaps this is only
a tired heart
finally learning
that distance too
can be a kind of mercy.