Amelia James Poetry

it didn’t happen all at once.
losing your grip rarely does.
it’s not one moment—it’s hundreds.
small fractures. tiny rewrites.
she stepped into a story that wasn’t hers to finish,
picked up promises still warm from my hands.

the first time i noticed, it was…
the subtle backtracking.
Denials slipped in like casual conversation.
“oh, i never said that,”
even though i remembered the exact moment.
the exact words.
the exact burn in my chest when i read them.

no one warned me how grief turns shapeless,
how it wraps around your ribs and makes you question your own lungs.

every accusation she hurled clung to my bones,
tightened around my throat,
and i started wondering if she was right—
if maybe i was unstable, unhinged, unworthy.
he handed her the story, she swallowed it whole.
they called it moving on, i called it trespassing,
because you can’t call it love when you steal it out of someone else’s hands.

then it was the quiet dismissal.
the way my words got smaller around her.
Apologies rolled off my tongue faster than i could count.
every conversation ended with me saying sorry,
even when i wasn’t sure what for.
even when i walked away feeling like
i had just erased myself… again.

all i did was beg for fairness, for clarity,
but she held court like a saint,
reciting scripture between insults,
turning every apology into a confession i was forced to make,
while she stood spotless in the mirror she built for herself.
parroting his version of me like scripture,
never questioning who handed her the script,
wearing stolen vows like a crown,
building her fairytale out of my wreckage.

Remember when i held up the mirror, and it shattered me instead?
she told people she forgave me.
she cloaked herself in righteousness,
while i was left swallowing shame that didn’t belong to me.

she learned to attack first, louder, sharper,
as if hurting me louder made her innocent.
as if screaming my sins erased her own.

i searched for the root of her cruelty,
wondered how someone could break me,
then wear my heartbreak like a trophy.

violence doesn’t always leave bruises.
sometimes it’s a quiet hum beneath your skin,
the ache of being rewritten in rooms you’re not invited to anymore.

then came the tears.
always the tears.
Victimhood looked good on her.
better than it ever looked on me.
people rushed to protect her from me,
from the version of me she created,
from the version of me he designed,
from the “bitter ex,”
the “unstable one,”
the girl they turned into a warning sign,
while she rewrote my ending and called it her happy beginning.

they made it look effortless.
how quickly a version of me became public property.
i wasn’t the quiet, heartbroken girl anymore—
i was a punchline.
i was a lesson on “how not to be.”

by the time the last doors closed,
i didn’t recognize my own reflection.

Over time, my name became the warning.
my voice was the first thing stolen.
my name was the next.

and out of all the things she took from me—
my peace, my dignity, my version of the story—
the cruelest theft was my certainty.
she didn’t just gaslight me.
she made me light the match.

that’s the damage no one talks about.
not the public shame—
the private unraveling.
the part where you sit alone,
staring at the ceiling,
wondering if maybe…
maybe you were the villain after all.

because if enough people tell you,
you start building yourself around the lie.

i learned to apologize for things i didn’t do.
i learned to stay quiet in rooms i paid rent in.
i learned to hate the sound of my own name.

and sometimes—
even now—
i wonder if she’d call this bitterness.

i call it grieving.

-Amelia James