# **When Love Stops Answering**

You attacked Love for years
because you mistook its patience
for permission.

You watched it forgive,
watched it swallow insult after insult,
watched it carry wounds quietly
so no one else would have to bleed—

and somewhere in your arrogance
you decided:

*It will never strike back.*

Then Love finally stood up.

And suddenly
you called it crazy.

So enjoy the madness
you spent years manufacturing.

Enjoy the unfamiliar footsteps
coming down the road
you paved yourself.

You should have done your homework
before deciding whom to haunt.

Some hearts are not empty houses.
Some doors should never be kicked open.
Some people survive by becoming acquainted
with things their attackers
could never stomach meeting.

You expect mercy?

Look carefully.

There was mercy here once.

You killed it slowly.

There was tenderness here once.
There was forgiveness here once.
There was a hand that would have reached
into the deepest pit
and pulled you out.

But you kept biting the hand
until eventually
it stopped reaching.

Now there is only the void
where Love used to live—

and every shadow you threw into it,
every nightmare you fed,
every ugly intention you released
believing darkness only traveled one direction,

is waiting at the threshold.

Hungry.

Not for blood.

For **justice.**

Because consequence has an appetite
that vengeance could never understand.

Keep sending your energy.

Keep pouring yourself
into the machinery you built.

Eventually you may discover
the oldest trick manipulation ever learned:

convince a person to destroy themselves
while believing
they are destroying someone else.

And perhaps this is where
your perspective should change.

Because Love does not need
to hunt you.

Love returns to Love.

That is what should frighten you.

The wounded heart heals.
The abandoned find one another.
The truth gathers witnesses.
The light you tried to extinguish
finds another flame.

Meanwhile hatred
has nowhere to return
except the hands that carried it.

So when your fears begin
wearing familiar faces,

when the emptiness starts feeding
upon everything you thought
would always remain yours,

do not call Love cruel.

Do not call Love insane.

Do not call consequence
an attack.

Remember how many years
you stood at the edge of the abyss
throwing pieces of another soul inside—

and never once wondered
whether the abyss
was keeping count.

There is a different meaning
to **soul-sucking** now, isn't there?

A different perspective
when the darkness you cultivated
no longer recognizes
the person you intended to feed it.

You wanted Love emptied.

Congratulations.

You found the void.

And somewhere beyond you,
untouched by the grave you prepared,

Love has already returned
to Love.