Fool Me Once

Fool me once,

Shame on you.

That’s what they say, right?

As if pain arrives neatly packaged,

As if betrayal comes with a warning label,

As if love doesn’t sometimes wear the face

Of the thing that ruins you.

Fool me once,

And I called it misunderstanding.

I dressed your cruelty in softer clothes,

Called it stress,

Called it trauma,

Called it “you didn’t mean it like that.”

I became a translator

For a language made entirely of wounds.

I took every sharp word

And turned it sideways in my mouth

So it wouldn’t cut you

The way it cut me.

Fool me twice,

Shame on me.

Because twice became ten times,

Became a hundred,

Became eulogies

For the parts of me that kept believing.

Because every time you broke me

I handed you the hammer back

Like maybe this time

You would use it to build something.

Maybe this time

Your hands would learn tenderness.

Maybe this time

The fire would remember it was once just warmth.

But no.

It was always the same script.

You hurt me.

You apologized in the shape of tears.

I mistook remorse for change.

You reached for power

And I placed it in your palm

Like an offering,

Like a prayer,

Like a fool kneeling at the altar

Of potential.

I kept loving the ghost of who you could be

While the reality of who you were

Kept sinking its teeth into me.

I bet it tasted like rust and blood

And hope.

I stood at the doorway

Of my own destruction

And kept calling it home.

I looked at bruises on my spirit

And said,

“No, wait,

They love me.”

Or

“No, wait,

They’re family.”

I kept confusing familiarity

With safety.

I let your hands

Become the weather in my life.

I gave you matches

Every time you promised

Not to burn me again.

When you smiled,

I could still see my blood staining it.

Fool me once,

Shame on you.

Fool me twice,

Shame on me.

Fool me three times, four, five, six—

At what number

Does shame just swallow you whole?

Because I am full of it.

Shame in the marrow.

Shame in the mirror.

Shame stitched into every version of myself

That said

T stay.

Stay.

They’ll change.

Stay.

They didn’t mean it.

Stay.

Love is patient.

Stay

Until patience turns into self-erasure.

And maybe that is the deepest humiliation:

Not that you hurt me,

But that I kept handing you the knife

After pulling it from where you left it

In my flesh.

I kept unlocking the cage door

Only to crawl back inside it.

I kept expecting a miracle

From the same hands

That only ever knew how to

A make wreckage of me.

They call that insanity, don’t they?

Doing the same thing

Over and over

And expecting a different result.

I call it hope’s uglier sister.

The one with hollow eyes.

The one who keeps waiting at the window

For storms to become sunlight.

The one who thinks

If she just loves harder,

Bleeds quieter,

Forgives faster—

Pain will finally learn mercy.

Fool me once,

That was your sin.

Fool me twice,

That is my shame and sorrow.

And I will wallow about it tonight

Then trust you again tomorrow,

Rinse,

Then repeat,

Until I finally learn my lesson.

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