Loved for Being Easy to Love
They never wrote poems for men like me. Too soft to be a storm, too quiet to be a warning.
I was never the man they wrote poems about.
No thorn, no growl, no danger in my mouth.
Just soft edges, quiet laughs,
a safe chest to bleed on and abandon once clean.
It’s a dangerous thing,
to be loved for how little you need.
To be praised for your silence
by hands that never care what buried your voice alive.
They worshipped the version of me
that swallowed rage before it could rattle the dinner table,
that offered forgiveness like an open throat,
that let boundaries die polite deaths
before they ever made someone uncomfortable.
Easy to love is easy to forget.
They called me everything while emptying me out by the spoonful.
I know now: softness without teeth is just prey
pretending it’s holy.
I’m learning to be the thorn in their palm,
the bite behind the grin,
worth the trouble, worth the noise,
unafraid to be too sharp for their comfort.
If they run, good.
I’d rather be feared for my growl
than adored for how easy I made it to leave me bleeding.
They liked how easy I made it.
How my mouth stayed soft enough to kiss
even when my ribs wanted to roar.
They called me gentle, safe,
never brave enough to admit
they loved me most when I asked for nothing back.
This piece is the bruise beneath every polite nod I gave them.
I was never the man they wrote a poem about,
I was the quiet place they bled out their storms in,
then left once the weather cleared.
They never wondered
what it did to a man
to be so easy to keep,
so easy to forget.
I didn’t make demands.
I didn’t snarl.
I didn’t name what I needed.
So they took.
And took.
And took.
Now I know:
softness without a backbone
isn’t mercy,
it’s self-burial dressed up for Sunday dinner.
I’m done with that grave.
Let them taste the thorn.
Let them flinch when my calm splits open
and they find teeth where they thought they left a safe mouth.
If I am hard to love now,
good.
If I am sharp enough to cost them blood,
good.
Better a wound they remember
than a quiet man they drain dry
then praise for how sweet he died.
I won’t be that safe chest again.
Let them run if my edges draw blood.
I’d rather be remembered for the growl
than die polite at their feet.
You’re not a subscriber,
you’re a co-conspirator.
This is a room where silence loses every time we open our teeth together.
Stay. Bring your confession.
Bring your version too loud for polite company.
Here, your rage is holy.
Your softness is armed.
Your boundaries are not up for polite debate.
Every poem you read here is a rib torn loose, a page refusing to stay dead.
Soon they’ll bind themselves into a living thing called Shadow Thoughts: The Silence That Kept Me.
Not tidy self-help but a mirror that won’t flinch when you do.
I don’t know when it’ll wear a spine and a barcode.
I don’t care.
It’s alive now.
Feral. Soft. Dripping on your screen whether you’re ready or not.
Stay loud enough to make the polite ones flinch.
Stay honest enough to scare the hush that raised you.
Stay. We’re louder together.
P.S.
If this stirred something in you,
it might speak to someone else too.
Feel free to pass it on.
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