Only Soldier

I spent so long building walls out of the things I couldn’t say,
A fortress of silence to keep the ache of you at bay.
I thought if I didn’t speak your name, the earth wouldn’t shift,
But time is a jagged claw, and I was just the tectonic drift.

You are the evergreen soldier, standing in the thaw,
The only thing that didn’t wither under time’s cruel law.
I am not a kept garden, no manicured rows of grace,
I am the mess of the forest floor, the wild, tangled space
Where the sun barely touches the moss and the rot,
The parts of my heart that I thought you’d have surely forgot.

But you don’t mind the debris or the shadows I cast,
You walk through the undergrowth, reclaiming the past.
It’s a terrifying, heavy grace—the way you hold the history of me,
Like you’re the gardener of all the things I didn’t want to be.

And oh, the tragedy of waiting—of how many years I spent
Polishing the armour, hiding the dents,
Thinking that to be loved was to be perfect, to be pristine,
Instead of the ruin of everything I’ve ever been.

But I am stripping it all away, just to be closer to you, right here.
I am letting the metal fall, quiet and clear.
You are the only soldier I would lay my weapons down for,
Because in your eyes, I am not a battlefield anymore.

I am a home.
And for the first time in my life, I am finally, completely, yours.
It is devastating, really, to have lived so long in the dark,
Only to realise the fire was you, right from the start.