Control
Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe
Love was never the point.
Not for him.
Affection was merely the currency he spent
to purchase compliance,
a calculated tenderness he could rescind
the moment you mistook it for safety.
What he wanted—
what men like him always want—
was dominion.
A sovereign territory carved from your autonomy,
patrolled by his moods,
regulated by his silence.
He learned early that real power
is not loud or frantic.
It is quiet, incremental,
a gradual redirection of gravity
until your world orbits him
without ever noticing the shift.
Control, for him, was both instinct and ideology—
a self-reinforcing doctrine
built on the premise
that the emotions of others exist
only as instruments of his own design.
A narcissism so absolute
it masqueraded as destiny.
He mastered the rhetoric of tenderness:
I only worry because I care.
I only raise my voice because you weren’t listening.
I only question you because something felt wrong.
Every sentence a hypothesis
that presumes your guilt.
Every apology a confession
you were coerced into accepting.
He did not love you—
he curated you.
Adjusted you like a painting hung a fraction too low,
straightened you when you tilted out of frame,
trimmed your edges
so you would fit inside the narrative he authored.
Your dreams became inconveniences.
Your needs became inefficiencies.
Your boundaries became threats
to the seamless ecosystem of his control.
And still—
he called this love.
As if devotion could be measured
by how many pieces of yourself you surrendered.
As if possession were intimacy,
and obedience were proof of loyalty.
But you learned.
Slowly, painfully,
you began to recognise the architecture of coercion—
the intermittent reinforcement,
the cycles of punishment and reprieve,
the emotional sleight-of-hand
that made you question your own reality.
Control is not love.
It is a hunger with no palate,
a desire that devours
even as it insists it is sustaining you.
It is a cage built from compliments,
a tether braided from fear,
a script that names you both protagonist and blame.
And the miracle—
the immense, incandescent miracle—
is that one day,
you stepped out of the story.
Walked past the parameters he set for you,
past the gravity he manufactured,
past the myth of his indispensability.
You discovered that leaving a man like that
is not simply liberation.
It is resurrection.
A reclamation of breath,
of selfhood,
of the radical truth
that love does not constrict—
it expands.
And control,
when exposed to light,
shrivels into what it always was:
a fragile empire built on fear,
collapsing the moment
you stop mistaking surveillance
for protection.
Keep My Words Alive
If this poem has stayed with you, you can help keep my words alive or explore more of my work. Every bit of support helps carry the stories forward.
WHERE WORDS MEET MORNING LIGHT
BEGIN EACH DAY WITH SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL
Every morning at 11:11AM, I send a poem — sometimes soft, sometimes devastating, always true.
💚 Subscribe now to read and breathe and feel along with me 💚
Poetry Anthologies by Britt Wolfe:
