Hurting Others Poem by Savva Emanon

We only wound
because we are walking wounded.

A fist is a heart that never learned
how to open.

Look closely,
anger is just grief in armour,
jealousy a starving child
gnawing at another's joy,
control a trembling hand
terrified of being left alone
with its own echo.

We bruise each other
with the sharp edges
of our unloved selves.
We speak in shrapnel.
We touch with thorns.
We build cages out of mirrors
and call it protection.

But the war was never out there.

It was the silent refusal
to sit beside our own ache,
to cradle the shaking animal within,
to whisper: you are enough,
even here... especially here.

Self-love is not scented candles
or slogans stitched on pillows.
It is excavation.
It is descending into the basement
of your history
and switching on the light.
It is forgiving the unphotogenic parts.
It is holding your own face
when no one else will.

And when you do,
when you dare to love yourself
without performance, without apology,
something seismic shifts.

Your words soften.
Your boundaries strengthen.
You stop asking others to bleed for wounds
they did not make.

Love of self is the revolution.
It disarms the tongue.
It unclenches the jaw.
It turns rivals into reflections,
strangers into kin.

Because when you are no longer
at war with your own shadow,
you stop casting darkness
over everyone else.

And suddenly,
relationship is not a battlefield.
It is a garden. And you arrive
with clean hands and an open heart.