Chained Heart

I wear these chains like second skin,
softened by time, yet digging in.
A love that bruises, binds, and stays,
a ghost that haunts in cruel delays.

You whisper love like poisoned air,
sweet enough to keep me there.
A velvet noose around my soul,
tightening, yet I won’t let go.

I build excuses, walls too high,
to cage the echoes of goodbye.
Each promise frays, a thread undone,
yet still, I weave them one by one.

Your hands, a storm, a summer rain,
your touch ignites, then brings me pain.
I drown in rivers made of you,
too deep to leave, too lost to move.

What is this love, a thorn or bloom?
A sunlit grave, a gilded tomb?
Yet here I stand, enslaved, confined,
a prisoner of my own design.