The Girl With Smiley Tattoo

I was drunk when I met her,
but it wasn’t the whiskey I craved,
it was the taste of something real—
something that wasn’t tangled in lies
or that taste of stale regret
that sat on my tongue for too long.

She didn’t ask for my scars,
didn’t ask for the baggage I dragged like a ball and chain—
she only wanted to know
what it felt like to be loved
by a man who finally learned how to love.

It’s funny how you start thinking you’ll never recover
from a woman who held you
only to let go when someone else touched her first.
And you scream,
you curse,
you drink yourself numb
until the night becomes a black hole
you can’t crawl out of.

But then you wake up one morning
with the sun in your eyes and a new face beside you—
and the silence feels different,
not empty,
but full.
And you realize
it’s not the forgiveness you needed,
but the strength to let yourself be loved again,
to believe in the possibility that maybe—
just maybe—
there’s something worth saving in this world
if you stop looking for it in all the wrong places.

Love doesn’t come clean.
It doesn’t show up in shiny new shoes or perfect skin.
It walks in like an old drunk in a dusty bar
and sits down next to you,
putting a hand on your shoulder
and saying,
“Hey,
I’ve been through worse.”

And maybe that’s all it takes—
the understanding that you’re both
just trying to get through this wreck of a life,
together.