Poems by Rose

Piece by Piece

I remember unwrapping the box—

Bright paper promising play,

Something meant for fun and family,

For laughter at the end of the day.

But before we built a single thing,

Before one block stood tall,

The cardboard caught my fingertip

And drew the first red warning of all.

I should have called it an omen—

That thin, bright thread of blood:

Before the game had even started,

It had already collected its price.

Still, I opened it.

Still, I played.

Still, I helped you stack each piece,

Never knowing something made for laughter

Would teach me how love comes apart.

Like a game of Jenga,

You pulled the first block

That shook the foundation

Of everything we built.

No matter what you do,

Though I may trust you,

It was never again intact

After that first attack.

When what was said, you repeated—

Words you claimed came from your ex who cheated—

Whether hers or something you designed,

I never knew whose poison I would find.

Either way, you brought it to me

And watched the first block slide—

Not caring where the words began,

Only where they landed inside.

Then came another piece.

And another.

You learned how much a tower could lose

Before anyone called it abuse.

You mocked what I provided—

another block gone.

Turned generosity to ridicule,

then reached for one more.

You made me the punchline,

then called the laughter small,

As though humiliation

Could never weaken walls.

You wanted my heart

To beat only to your will—

Another block extracted.

Another hollow left to fill.

Piece by piece,

Word by word,

You dismantled what we were.

Not with one tremendous strike,

But little pulls disguised as fights.

That is the cruelty of this game—

The tower does not scream.

It stands through every missing piece

And almost looks complete.

So you kept pulling.

One insult from the middle.

One accusation from below.

One cruel comparison

Placed where you knew it would show.

You tested every weakness

Like a soldier testing ground,

Finding where the structure shook,

Then circling back around.

You knew which blocks were bearing weight.

You knew which words would bruise.

Still, your hand kept reaching in

For something else to lose.

Until loving you became

The labor of remaining—

My two hands around a tower

You were steadily unmaking.

I braced one side.

You pulled the other.

I called it patience.

You pulled another.

And eventually

There was no balance left,

No trembling tower

Tenderness could keep upright.

It fell.

Not because I failed to hold it.

Not because one final fight

Was somehow heavier than every wound

That came before that night.

It fell because you emptied it

From the inside, piece by piece—

Taking trust, then tenderness,

Then safety, shelter, peace.

And when the whole thing hit the floor,

You stared at the scattered stack

As though collapse were sudden,

As though one block could put it back.

But ruins keep their records.

Every wooden piece could tell

Exactly where your fingers were

Before the tower fell.

So do not ask me which last block

Finally brought us to the ground.

There was no single final word—

There were hundreds scattered round.

You did not lose me in a moment.

You removed me piece by piece,

Until the love you swore you wanted

Had no structure underneath.

And still, I might have gathered

What little could be saved,

Still might have stacked the splinters

And called the wreckage whole.

But then one piece flew farther

Than the others ever had—

Past the ruins at my feet,

Past everything we had.

It struck the smaller towers

Standing quietly nearby,

And I watched them shake beneath it,

Too small to understand why.

That was the piece.

The one I could not excuse.

The one I would not sand smooth,

Restack, rename, or reuse.

Because I had learned to bear

What landed hard on me,

But I would not watch your hands

Teach smaller towers how to bleed.

So I knelt among the wreckage—

Not to rebuild what you destroyed,

Not to force the pieces back,

Not to fill another void.

I picked up every block

Your hands had pulled from place—

Every insult, every injury,

Every absence dressed as grace.

One by one,

I fed them to the fire.

The pieces that once held us

Became kindling for the pyre.

Then I poured a dark elixir

And watched the flames climb higher—

Whiskey washing over wood,

Gunpowder courting fire.

I would leave no charred reminder,

No block half-blackened, half-intact.

I wanted ash and only ash,

No splintered thing to carry back.

I watched the edges blacken.

I watched your fingerprints burn.

Watched every word you gave me

Become ash in its turn.

Piece by piece.

Flame by flame.

I gave the wreckage back its name.

Not love.

Not home.

Not something I should save.

Just timber from a fallen thing

I was no longer bound to raise.

You spent so long dismantling us

You thought the ending would be mine—

Me kneeling there among the blocks,

Still begging them to align.

But I was not rebuilding.

I was gathering.

And when I lifted the final piece,

I remembered that first thin cut—

The warning I had wrapped in hope

And chosen not to trust.

This time,

I listened.

I fed the final block to fire,

Watched flame consume what you had wrecked—

And for the first time in our game,

I was the one

who did not put it back.