The Place You Fear

There are wounds that arrive as whispers,


not shouted in anger,


not thrown like stones,


but laid softly between two hearts.

You said you would never go with me
 to the country that taught me my first language,


the streets that remember my childhood,


the sky that watched me grow.

And somehow,


what hurt most
 was not your refusal to travel.

It was the fear beneath it.

The thought that if we stood together there,


among the people who know my name,


I would turn my back on you.


That I would leave you unprotected,


alone in a place unfamiliar,


a stranger beside the person you love.

You spoke of not feeling safe.

And I wondered
 if all this time
you had been carrying a version of me
 that I do not recognize.

A woman who would abandon your hand
 when the roads became foreign.


A woman who would choose comfort over you.


A woman who would forget 
that your heart is her home too.

My country is not only borders and flags.


It is memories,


family stories,


the scent of familiar food,


the pieces of myself
I wished to share with you.

I dreamed of showing you where I came from,


not so you could understand the place,


but so you could understand me.

Yet before we ever arrived,


you were already afraid.

And there is a special sadness
 in realizing,

that the person you love ,


looks into your eyes
 and still cannot see
,

the loyalty you carry for them.

So I grieve two losses at once:

The journey we may never take.

And the trust
 that never made it far enough 
to begin.