RELATIONSHIP Poem: After Love, by Angie Nungu

I gave you a home,
patched the cracks where others had broken you,
fed you love like it was bread,
like hunger could be starved out of a person.

You said you were sorry.
You said you were done chasing ghosts,
but I heard the whispers,
saw the way your phone lit up
like a lighthouse in the dark.
And I knew.

Did he feel like silk?
Did he taste like freedom?
Was he softer, warmer—
did he call you by names
that didn’t carry my weight?

I was never enough, was I?
Not when I bled for you,
not when I forgave you,
not when I called your son my own.

You took everything.
Every damn thing.
And left me with the hollowed-out shell of a man
too tired to start over.

So, I ended it.
Not in rage—no, rage is quick and sloppy.
I ended it with the same steady hands
that once traced your spine
and built a life around you.

Now you are mine,
in the only way that lasts.

Forever.