The Version of Me You Never Met
Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe
There’s a whole version of me
you’ll never know—
a constellation formed
from every fracture you left behind,
stitched together with the kind of strength
that only grows in the dark.
She rises from the pieces
you didn’t think would matter,
glittering like the secret
I finally learned to keep for myself.
You knew the soft girl—
the one who bent like willow branches
in every wind you made.
But you never met the woman
who grew from the wreckage—
the one who learned to build her own shelter,
who stopped apologizing
for the thunder in her voice.
You didn’t stay long enough
to see the storm become a skyline.
I used to think love
was something I had to earn—
that if I shone bright enough,
softened enough,
starved myself small enough,
you might see me.
But becoming unrecognizable
has been the truest forgiveness
I could ever give myself.
Now I dance in the quiet
you left behind,
my own pulse setting the tempo,
my own breath steering the night.
There is power here—
in the choosing,
in the growing,
in the leaving behind of everything
that once dimmed me.
And still,
there are nights when I wonder
who I might have been
if you’d stayed—
if you’d nurtured instead of neglected,
held instead of hollowed.
But that future
is nothing more than a ghost
in a room I no longer enter.
The truth is,
you walked away before the miracle.
You gave up the moment
before the metamorphosis.
You never saw me become
the woman I needed—
the woman I deserved—
the woman I finally recognized
in the mirror.
And maybe that’s the quiet tragedy
you’ll never understand:
the best version of me
was born in the ruins you left.
You’ll never meet her.
You’ll only feel her absence
when the night is blue and sleepless
and you realize—
I am no longer the one who lost.
I am the one
who found herself.
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Poetry Anthologies by Britt Wolfe:
