The Winner Takes All

To me,
it was love.
To you,
it was a game.
A silent contest hidden beneath warm conversations,
where the winner takes all.
I arrived unarmed,
carrying gifts instead of strategy.
My heart,
My care,
My attention.
My favourite lines,
those carefully crafted arrangements of words,
that only existed because you did.
My time,
the one currency life never refunds.

I placed them all on the table,
believing they were offerings.
Believing they were enough.
Little did I know,
they were pieces being arranged on a board.
My pieces,
Scattered without order,
Positioned by a man who mistook devotion for direction.
I never saw the game,
Never heard the clock ticking,
Never noticed the opening move.
All you brought
were smiles.
Not love,
Not loyalty.
Just enough sweetness
to disguise the poison.
Manipulative smiles,
The kind that make cages look like homes,
The kind that keep a man hooked
long after he should have left.
And I stayed,
Comfortably trapped
inside a loop of ignorance.

I bared my soul to you,
hoping vulnerability would become a bridge.
I thought I had found a place
where my burdens could rest,
A sanctuary,
A refuge,
A love.
Instead,
you handed me half-hearted comforts,
Crumbs dressed as feasts.
And I accepted them,
Convinced myself
that half a loaf was better than none.
Convinced myself
that emptiness shared
was somehow fullness.
So we played.
Yet I knew not,
I lost pawns,
yet I knew not.
Watched pieces disappear
without questioning where they had gone.

My knight fell,
A loyal thing.
A brave thing.
And I turned my eyes from the blood.
My bishop was excommunicated,
Banished from the kingdom of my reason.
And I was the one
who showed him the exit.
You held my queen hostage,
The very embodiment of my worth,
my confidence,
my ability to move freely.
And when the ransom came due,
I paid with silence,
I paid with excuses,
I paid with pieces of myself.

Still,
I did not see.
Not until my king,
the last fragile fragment of who I was,
rose for a hopeless fight.
Wounded,
Outnumbered,
Exhausted,
He stood trembling amidst the wreckage,
and whispered the truth
I had spent months refusing to hear,
This is not love,
This is something darker.
Something hungrier,
Something that feeds
while pretending to nurture.
I searched for answers.
Looked for clues,
Looked for proof.
But realization is cruel,
It rarely arrives before the damage is done.
It waits,
Patiently.
Until there is almost nothing left to save.
And then, the game ended,
My king fell.
The board grew silent.

Only then,
did I finally see it,
The battlefield.
The strategy,
The moves,
The manipulation,
The game.
I saw it all,
when there was nothing left of me to play.
And there you stood,
Smiling.
Not the charming smile that kept me captive,
Not the gentle smile I had mistaken for affection.
No.
This one was different.
A villain’s smile,
A conqueror’s smile,
A smile that carried the weight
of victory.
You sighed,
One final breath.
Not of relief,
Not of sadness,
But of satisfaction.
And before you walked away,
you gathered the board,
Scooped up the ruins,
The broken pieces,
The remains of a man
who only came seeking love.
You looked back once,
Spoke with the certainty
reserved for victors and executioners,
And with chilling finality,
you said,
“I won.”
Then paused.
As though wanting me to remember it forever.
“And the winner takes all.”