The Unnamed Gift

When you give a gift,
do you announce it-This is for you-
or do you leave it in the dark
and call the receiver thief?

Hunger exists.
That is not the crime.
The crime is the hand
that looks like kindness
but forgets its own name.

They say: If you were hungry,
why did you not eat?
No one asks
why the bread was silent,
why it preferred to be stolen
rather than offered.

Desire arrives like weather.
To want is not weakness.
Weakness is pretending
weather is consent.

A gift that cannot say I am a gift
is not generosity.
It is pressure wearing perfume.

They will call refusal arrogance.
They will call restraint fear.
They will use your hunger
as proof you owed them yes.

But dignity is not fed
by what is merely available.

Love is not the feast.
Love is the moment
you choose to stay hungry
because eating would cost
your posture.

If that makes you lonely,
let it.

Better alone with hunger
than full of something
you never agreed to swallow.

You may call it surrender.
I call it voluntary restraint.

Falling requires no character.
Anyone can fall.

What matters
is standing when the hunger is real-
not because surrender is wrong,
but because not all gravity
deserves your kneel.

If two people choose each other,
that is not a feast.
That is alignment.

But if love demands collapse
to prove itself true,
it was never strength-
only appetite
dressed as virtue.

written by The Unnamed Gift

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