Maybe She is Sad?
Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe
Maybe she is sad.
Not the kind of sadness that softens a person
into something tender and reachable,
but the subterranean kind—
a grief that calcifies,
turning the heart into a citadel
where no light survives for long.
She moves through the world
like someone perpetually braced for impact,
every word sharpened,
every gesture laced with venom,
as though cruelty were oxygen
and she could not breathe
without lacerating someone first.
People call her vicious,
volatile,
a tempest wearing human skin.
But sometimes I wonder
if her malice is merely the echo
of her own unendurable disappointment—
the squandered potential
she cannot stop mourning,
the life she believes she deserved
but never built,
the brilliance she was promised
but never claimed.
There is a particular sorrow
that manifests as arrogance,
a particular emptiness
that masquerades as superiority.
Perhaps she learned early
that the world admired her promise
more than her personhood,
and when the promise withered,
she confused her worth
with its husk.
Maybe she is sad
because somewhere along the way
she mistook domination for dignity,
control for competence,
and cruelty for the only language
that could keep her from collapsing
into the truth of her own regret.
Maybe she lashes out
because she has forgotten
how to be held.
Maybe she ruins others
because she cannot fathom
why her own life feels ruined.
Maybe she inflicts misery
because misery is the only inheritance
she still believes she possesses.
And yes—
there are days
I ache with the weight
of what might have been.
The versions of us
that never learned how to love each other,
the futures we forfeited
to the volatility of her rage,
the tenderness we could have shared
in a parallel life
where she understood gentleness
as something other than weakness.
But I forgave her
long before she ever knew
she needed forgiving.
I forgave her each time
I stepped back instead of breaking,
each time I chose silence
over escalation,
each time I recognized
that the devastation she tried to deliver
was nothing compared to the devastation
already devouring her from within.
And still—
I forgive her now,
quietly,
continuously,
in the only way forgiveness
can survive a life like ours.
Because forgiveness,
when the wound is ancestral
and the cruelty habitual,
is not reconciliation.
It is not return.
It is not proximity.
Forgiveness,
in its most merciful form,
is distance—
a sacred, salvific distance
where I can wish her healing
without forfeiting my own,
where I can grieve
what we never were
without reopening what I survived,
where her sorrow
no longer dictates
the architecture of my days.
Maybe she is sad.
Maybe she always will be.
But I—
I am free.
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