madilyn alwardt Poet Free verse

Love In Subtation

It doesn’t happen loudly.
No thunder, no shattered glass—
just the quiet subtraction of you.

First, your edges soften.
You stop correcting them
when they get you wrong.

Then your voice lowers—
not silence yet,
just… less insistence on being heard.

You begin to edit yourself
mid-sentence, mid-thought, mid-feeling,
trimming away anything that might not fit
inside the space they’ve made for you.

Love, you say.
This is love.

But love should not feel
like translating your soul
into a language that has no word for you.

Days pass, then months—
you forget what you sounded like
before you became agreeable.

You forget what you wanted
before wanting became inconvenient.

Even your reflection hesitates now,
as if trying to recall your name.

And still, nothing looks broken.
No bruises, no smoke—

just a life tidied down to nothing.

That’s how it kills you.

Not with endings,
but with edits.

Not by taking your breath,
but by teaching you
not to need it so much.

Until one day,
there’s nothing left to erase—

and no one left
to notice.

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