I won’t tell you how I stayed

When I should’ve walked away

How I let silence take my side

Because I thought love meant delay

I won’t tell you I forgave

Things I never understood

Or how I shrunk myself to fit

What someone called “being good”

I won’t mention all the times

I rehearsed the perfect line

Only to swallow it again

When her mood rewrote the rhyme

I won’t hand you all my bruises

Wrapped in lessons I misused

I’ll just say: “Be kind, be strong”

And hope that’s somehow true

I won’t tell you how I shut down

When they said “be a man”

How I mistook fear for pride

And wore it like a plan

I won’t share the nights I doubted

My worth in a stranger’s bed

Or how I let hands hold me

Who barely knew what I had said

I won’t teach you how to fight

Yourself just to stay kind

But I’ll watch you learn the cost

Of keeping peace inside your mind

I won’t say that love feels heavy

Even when it says it’s light

That “forever” is a mirror

Some people hang in fading light

I won’t cry when you get hurt

I’ll nod and let you speak

And I’ll wish that I could warn you

Without sounding like the weak

But if one night you can’t sleep

And the quiet feels too loud

Know that I once stayed too long

Trying not to make her proud

One day, you’ll meet someone

Who makes your heart race —

Too fast, too hard,

Too wrong to last.

And you’ll think that’s love.

But remember:

What grips tight

Doesn’t always hold true.

And the one who stays silent

Might be the one

Who’s learned the most.

I might tell you someday.

But probably too late.

Like everything we learn

By living what someone else couldn’t say.