Never me

Dedication
For the girls who stayed too long,
for the ones who loved loud and left quiet
This is for the broken-hearted
who kept giving, even when it was never them

Introduction
There are stories we tell ourselves to survive and stories we finally speak to heal. Never Me is not a love story. It's the aftermath. The silence. The reckoning.
It's the confessional breath taken after years of swallowing pain in the name of love.
These poems were born from a love that never chose me back, a ghosted devotion and a heartbreak that clung like shadow. I wrote these verses to untangle myself from the echoes, the almost and the soft lies I believed just to stay a little longer.
This book is for those who loved with both hands while being held with only fingertips. If you ever felt like a placeholder in someone else's forever, these words are yours too.

Author's Note
I didn't write Never Me to shame what was or to grieve what could've been. I wrote it because silence was no longer an option. I carried too many poems in my chest, too many "I deserved betters" never said aloud.
If these pages hurt: good.
If they heal: even better.
Thank you for walking through the fire with me.
Love still lives here,
even when it's no longer romantic.
Even when it's just the kind I learned to give myself.
Gem.R.Masawi