I sent you words

dressed in honesty,

no perfume of lies,

no borrowed lines.

You answered with silence—

not loud,

not cruel,

just empty.

And I learned something then:

that love offered

is never wasted,

even when it is not received.

If you did not read my heart,

it does not mean

my heart cannot read itself.

I will not curse you,

nor turn you into a monster

to soften my pain.

I release you

as quietly as you ignored me,

and I walk back to myself

with my poem still breathing.


THEMBA T TWALA III