Love Poem: At What Cost
Parth  Zadey  Avatar
Written by: Parth Zadey

At What Cost

My parents didn’t teach me love—
I learned it from the silence.

My mother never asked
why my eyes were red.
She looked,
but never really saw.

My father only noticed me
when I made a mistake.
Love,
in our house,
was conditional.
Thin.
Breakable.
Absent.

So I taught myself
how to hug my own shoulders
when no one else reached out.

How to whisper "it's okay"
when the shouting outside
made the inside of me tremble.

I learned to wipe my own tears
before they stained the floor,
before someone saw
and called it weakness.

I held my own hand
when the weight of the world
pressed down like a roof caving in.

I taught myself how to survive—
how to exist
in a house that never
felt like home.

And I survived.

But at what cost?