Sick Love

They called it love—

the ones who could not feel.

The mother who needed a nurse

more than a daughter.

The father who mistook

control for closeness.

The lover who took

and called it destiny.

They said, stay close,

but meant, stay small.

They said, you’re mine,

but meant, you’re never free.

They fed on devotion

and named it tenderness.

They clipped the wings

and blamed the wind.

I learned to love

by starving.

To hope

by bleeding.

To stay

when I should have flown.

And even when betrayal

came dressed as care—

the child repeating his father’s lines,

the man reciting his mother’s wounds—

I still offered

the purest love I knew.

The kind that doesn’t count the cost.

The kind that burns to give.

But sick love

is a cage lined with memory.

It kisses you

while it drains you.

It whispers forever

while it watches you fade.

And one day,

you wake up

and the echo inside you asks:

Is it too much to want a love that doesn’t need to hurt to prove it’s real?

I loved them all

with the purest love of all.

The kind that healed nothing—

but taught me everything.

“The purest heart learns: love is not sacrifice, it’s freedom.”

I am Gina Muresan