The Break Room

Your breath, a sweetness,

then the bitter tang

of self-pity, arrived, uninvited.

And with it, the exposed,

not just the threads undone,

but the living flesh,

the raw, fragile truth.

Then the silence thickened,

a cold realization.

That I, too, was made

of such wounds.

With each word unbound, 

a clearer pattern 

of self-infliction.

And sympathy,

a thin membrane, tore.

What was left were the consequences.