The Boy Beneath the Bravado

Written from the edge of recognition

The night we met, you came to my place in pajamas, holding a tiny dropper bottle of mezcal—the kind usually used for mixing paint.

It was strange and funny and a little absurd, in the most endearing way.

You weren’t trying to impress me.

There was no show.

Just this quiet, awkward softness that somehow made everything around you feel a little more honest.

That version of you—that shy, slightly offbeat, unguarded version—

That was you before the performance.

Before the ego stepped in.

Before the addiction needed to make you feel bigger, stronger, in control.

That night, you met me with humility.

Not strategy.

And I didn’t fall for a fantasy.

I fell for the flicker—of who you were, before the war with yourself fully took over.

I was never drawn to your power.

I was moved by your absence of it.

By that rare, unpolished presence. The part of you that didn’t yet know how to mask itself around me.

And maybe that’s why everything flipped later.

Because I saw you in a way you weren’t ready to be seen.

I didn’t just see potential.

I saw blueprint.

And that kind of sight is terrifying for someone who’s spent their life learning to perform instead of exist.

Once a man knows he’s been seen at that depth, he either builds with the woman who saw him—or spends the rest of the relationship hiding behind new scaffolding.

You chose the scaffolding.

Control.

False calm.

Power games.

You slipped back into dominance—not because it suited you, but because being adored made you feel too exposed.

You needed to feel above me not because you believed you were,

but because the version of you I loved made you feel small in the best, most necessary way.

Like a boy being called forward.

Like someone who might finally have to grow.

So you twisted it.

Made me chase.

Dropped bait instead of offering truth.

Put yourself in the frame, not in the room.

And I watched the distance grow where intimacy was supposed to live.

I’m not haunted by the man who left.

I’m haunted by the boy underneath the bravado.

The one who showed up in pajamas with a dumb little bottle and no defense.

That version—the one with no script—he could have stayed.

He deserved to be loved.

But you buried him the moment my light started to wake you up.

Because some men don’t want to be loved back to life.

They want to survive unnoticed.

And me?

I noticed everything.

The sweetness.

The shadow.

The shake in your voice when you thought love might actually be real this time.

And I loved all of it.

Even the broken.

Even the soft.

But you chose power over surrender.

And now, all you have left is the echo of my silence—

and the memory of who you almost got to become in my presence.