Once I Was His, Now I Am Mine

Poetry

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

There are stories a woman carries quietly, not in her hands, but in the spaces between her breaths. Stories that do not shout stories that sit beside her like an old memory on a wooden porch. And this is one of those stories. For the one time he touched my soul, for the one time he touched my heart. I was once his complete and full. Not halfway, not almost, but fully. I was once his to do as he pleased, his comfort in the quiet hours, his warmth when the world outside grew cold. I cooked the meals that filled the house with scent and softness. I cleaned the rooms where his footsteps rested. I gave my hands, my time, my care. I tried to be everything he needed, or maybe everything he wanted. Or maybe if truth sits honestly in the corner of the room, I was simply what was there when he needed someone. Still, I once had him and he once had me, all of me. The kind of love where a woman doesn't measure the distance, doesn't count the cost, the kind of love where if he had said walk through fire, my feet would have already been burning before my mind even thought to ask why. That is the dangerous beauty of loving with your whole soul. By time, time has a quiet way of rearranging everything. Now here I am, a woman sitting on the front porch, watching the day move by slowly, watching people come and go like passing thoughts. Sometimes I think of him, sometimes I don't. Sometimes his memory drifts across my mind like a cloud that doesn't stay long enough to block the sun. And sometimes sometimes I wonder if it still could have been. Still, I sit here peacefully because a woman who has loved deeply knows something the world often forgets. Even when love leaves, it never truly takes the part of you that learned how to love. So here I remain on this front porch of memory and moving days, a woman who once gave everything and survived the silence afterward. And though he was once mine and I was once his, today I belong to the quiet strength that grew after he was gone.