He wasn’t hiding from the world.
He was hiding from himself.
But when they asked,
he cried wolf,
and I became the fangs.

Go ahead.
Run.
Race past the stories you don’t want to own.
You can paint yourself gentle,
and I’ll keep the silence like a curse.
But your shadow still follows.
Even when no one else looks.

You wanted light?
You had it.
It burned me down to give it to you.

You called it fear.
You called it trauma.
But all I saw
was a boy
who broke the mirror
and blamed the glass.

“They’ll never know,”
you whispered.
And they won’t.
They’ll call you kind.
Soft.
The one who loved too much.
And I?
I’ll be the villain who asked you to grow.

Go on.
Bury me in your version.
Call it closure.
Call it healing.
Call it whatever you need.

But I remember.
You left long before the door opened.
And when the curse finally cracked—
you called it mine.

Now spring returns
and I bloom in silence.
No more hiding.
No more waiting.
You don’t get to come back here.

Not to mourn,
not to rewrite,
not even to remember.

Because some villains
don’t wait under the bed.

We leave it empty.

And we lock the door behind us.

-Ikkel Y.-