A ledger of unseen approval
I was a small architect of hope, building a case
for my own worth from the crumbs you dropped—
a grunt, a glance that almost stayed.
I learned to read the weather of your silences:
the cold front meant I'd spoken too loud,
the drought meant I'd asked for something again.
You taught me that love is a door you hold open
only when I'm shrinking through it.
Every gift had a hook, every kind word a ledger.
I kept trying to pay a debt I never signed.
Now at twenty I am unlearning your arithmetic—
how you made my hunger feel like a crime,
your approval a leash I kept pulling tighter
until my neck went numb.
The hardest part is not that you never loved me.
It's that I believed I could earn it
if I just disappeared enough