He learned it behind locked steel…

He learned it behind locked steel doors,
where time doesn’t heal—
it hardens.

A language passed hand to hand in silence,
not spoken like truth,
but practiced like a trick
until it looked like truth.

Power, they called it.
A game without laughter.
A way to make someone smaller
so you wouldn’t feel small.

And in that place,
boundaries weren’t broken—
they were erased slowly,
like pencil lines in damp paper.

He carried it out with him
when the gates opened,
thinking distance would soften it,
thinking the world outside
wasn’t still a room with consequences.

So he used it again—
not with bars and concrete,
but with words and screens,
where anger could be baited
and pain could be triggered
from a safe distance.

And it worked.
Too easily.

Until “easy” stopped meaning harmless.

Because somewhere in the noise,
there were real lives on the other end—
real fractures forming,
real nights that didn’t end,
real people carrying what was left
after the moment passed.

And it didn’t stay out there.

It followed him back in.

Not as punishment.
As memory.

As the quiet kind of weight
that doesn’t shout
but never leaves the room.

Now he understands
what they never said out loud:

power taken through harm
doesn’t disappear when you’re done using it.

It stays.
In them.
In him.

And regret is not loud.

It is just permanent.