A Garden That Refuses To Let Me Go Poem by Faith Cecelia Story

I did not know
that love could rot into rage
while still smelling like roses.

You came to me
like spring—
soft, unannounced,
a bloom I did not plant
yet watered with everything in me.

And now I stand here,
hands stained with petals and blood,
asking—
how does a garden betray its own gardener?

I love you.
God, I love you
in ways that feel ancient,
like my soul memorized yours
before my body was even formed.

Your voice—
that deep, unruly thunder—
still rolls through my chest at night,
cracking me open like dry earth
begging for rain that never comes.

Your skin—
dark, luminous,
like the richest soil—
I wanted to bury myself in you
and grow.

And I did.
I grew—
wild, uncontained,
wrapping my roots around your name
until I could no longer tell
where I ended
and where you began.

But love—
love is not enough.

And that truth
is a blade
I keep swallowing whole.

Because how—
how do we keep arriving here?
At this wall,
this cold, unyielding thing
that does not care how deeply I feel,
how fiercely I burn,
how beautifully I break?

You ask for space.

And I give it—
I give it like a martyr,
like a fool,
like a woman tearing pieces of her own skin
and calling it devotion.

But space does not empty you from me.
No—
you linger.

You linger in the air
like fog that refuses to lift,
curling around my lungs
until breathing becomes remembering.

You linger
in the softest, most dangerous places—
in the curve of my thoughts,
in the warmth between my thighs,
in the quiet
where your absence screams the loudest.

And I am angry.

Not the kind of anger that shouts—
no—
mine blooms.

It blooms
like a poisonous flower,
beautiful enough to be mistaken for love
until it touches the skin
and burns.

I am angry
that I love you this much.

Angry that my heart
refuses logic,
refuses dignity,
refuses the simple truth that
you are not mine.

You belong elsewhere.
To another life,
another story,
another ending
that does not carry my name.

And still—
still—
I ache for you
like a wound that refuses to close,
like a thorn that buries itself deeper
every time I try to pull it out.

Tell me—
what kind of prison
has no walls
yet keeps me captive?

What kind of love
turns breath into chains,
turns memory into iron bars,
turns longing into a life sentence?

Because I am trapped—
not by you,
but by the way I feel you
even when you are gone.

And the cruelest part?

If you came back—
if you reached for me
with that same sweetness,
that same gravity—

I would bloom again.

Even knowing
the storm that follows.

Even knowing
this garden
will always end
in ruin.
Faith Cecelia Story