The Weight of Hands

I. (The One Who Strikes)
My hands were not always weapons.
Once, they built, they held, they traced soft lines
down the curve of a cheek, the slope of a spine.
Now, they leave bruises where warmth used to be.

I don’t know when it started.
When my voice learned to splinter bone,
when my love turned to restraint,
when the air between us thickened with something sour.
I don’t remember choosing this.
But I remember how easy it was.

II. (The One Who Watches)
I have seen the aftermath—
skin that blooms in purples and reds,
the way she shrinks when his shadow shifts.
I have seen the way she smiles through the pain,
like it is something she owes him.

I despise him.
The way his fingers curl into fists,
the way he pretends not to see what he’s done,
the way he tells her it wouldn’t happen if—
if she hadn’t spoken, if she hadn’t looked at him that way,
if she just understood.

But I loathe myself more.
For saying nothing.
For looking away.
For waiting until the storm has passed
before pretending I do not feel the wreckage beneath my feet.

III. (The One Who Trembles)
I raise my hands—
not to strike, not to shield,
but to touch the space between us,
to feel where the cracks have spread.

Am I the monster, or the coward?
The one who harms, or the one who lets harm continue?
Is my silence not another wound?
Is his rage not another plea?

We are both drowning.
And the water does not care who sank first.