you ask for love the way a child calls to birds, yet when it lands near, you startle and retreat. you shrink from touch as though arms were thorns. you run from kindness, though someone would gladly scrub your weary clothes and hang them in the breeze. you build fences you never truly mean to guard, painting doors you never intend to open.

there is an old hunger in you, book-dust and lantern-lit, a yearning that feels like trying to earn the very air you breathe. you fasten your armour each morning, puzzled when the world meets you in battle, puzzled when eyes linger long enough to feel like they might swallow you whole.

still, you step outside, hoping for sunlight, yet you flinch at its warmth and recoil at the sight of worms and caterpillars — the small, crawling truths that remind you how easily beauty and discomfort share the same soil. somewhere inside, you dream of loving in technicolour, though you have only ever moved in shades of grey.

some days, you bloom like wildflowers in a sunlit clearing, windows flung open to the sky. other days, you tear yourself from your roots, flinging soil and petals in a desperate ache to feel, recoiling from the garden you long to touch. anger rises like tangled vines, sharp against your chest, for even in the soil of your own hands, you cannot yet plant yourself fully.