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Protection

By Ryan Chan

19 Aug 2026 10:20 PM

I can taste the blood on my lips
not from anything bleeding
but from the silence. From the
heartache of meeting concealmeant.
The hurt of being cut off from someone
I held in my heart. Someone I wanted
to protect. Someone who now wants
protection from me. How I hurt.

How I hurt knowing I murdered
a relationship like crows feasting
on something so dead. How I hurt
guessing how her silence to me
is comforting to her. For is it
the funeral that happens in an
event or the analogy of a living
body being so dead?

Because what hurts so deep
is this stabbing and mutilation
where I can not know them
in their living even though
they are not dead.

This premeditation of
the guessing. As I do care
about her enough to guess.
To guess how she is and
to guess what she wants.

How I hurt in this protection.
How I hurt in the absence of affection.

A procession of tears wash me
away from how you are no longer
quite there to cry with me.

I am hurt in your silence as I guess what it speaks.

Nevermore, nevermore.