Hand Me Down Hearts

I grew up learning the shape of absence

tracing it along doorframes

pressing my fingers to walls

hoping they would teach me

how to fold myself into love

without snapping in the corners

You moved through your house like sunlight

hands spilling kindness I could not catch

your laughter lingered in corners

like it belonged to someone

I would never meet

I learned to hide my name

tilt my voice

paint over the cracks in my hands

so when they asked if I was okay

I could nod

and let the lie fill the room

like a guest who never eats

I grazed my knees on gravel paths

fell into shadows that no one lifted me from

I learned love

is sometimes medicine you swallow alone

bitter, necessary

still enough to keep you breathing

I imagine a table somewhere

soft hands and light

people asking how your day was

and meaning it

I taste it on my tongue

and it burns

not because I wanted it less

but because I wanted it too much

I have grown uneven

half jagged edges, half fragile

learning to cradle myself

while the world teaches me

to survive without it

to plant hope

where no one planted it first

Sometimes I wonder

if anyone remembers

how I learned to fall

if anyone knows the taste of a heart

fed only by echoes

or the way it bleeds quietly

between hands

that could not hold me

I do not wait for rescue

I do not wait for recognition

I make space for myself

in the corners I claimed

in the silence I survived

in the weight of every absent hand

that could have lifted me

but did not

And I am learning

life can grow

even from hand me down hearts

even from shadows left by love

that was never mine