Revision if a 2016 poem

Do We Ever Really Learn?
Sometimes an old piece of writing surfaces — a scrap from a different version of ourselves — and it asks quietly whether it still belongs to us.
This one was written in 2016, during a time when rhyme felt like a kind of scaffolding, a way to hold emotion steady. Reading it now, I can see the questions I was trying to ask long before I had the language to answer them.It was a poem about love, trust, and the delicate line between holding someone gently and holding them too tightly.
The feelings still matter.
The voice just needed to grow. It shows that whilst rhyme can be lovely it can also be restrictive especially when rhyme almost skews the line. But learning is a continuum and other ways to get lyrically sounding pieces are now within my lexicon.
So I’ve reshaped it — not to erase who I was, but to let the poem breathe in a different way. Neither is intrinsically wrong but my voice has changed over time.

Do we ever really learn?

Original!

The difference between,the need to hold out a hand
Or clutching someone’s heart in a vicelike band
That fluidity of trust is better than iron resolve
That doesnt flex or rust,we all need space.
Love doesn’t mean shackles tightly in place
Unthinking actions will cause hurt
However much someone cares, some things are cursed
How ever hard we love
Some people are not in the same groove
Do we ever really learn?

To learn lessons from yesterday
Not get mired in despair let misery hold sway
Do we ever learn?
To live life at its best?

Do We Ever Really Learn?
(a lyrical re‑imagining)
Do we ever really learn
the quiet difference
between offering a hand
and holding someone so tightly
their heart forgets its own rhythm.
Trust is a living thing —
not iron, not fixed,
but something that bends
in the pattern of two lives.
Love is not a lock.
It is a room with windows open,
a space we choose
to share without closing the door.
Care can bruise
when need leans too heavily.
Devotion can misalign
when two hearts move
on different tides.
Do we ever really learn
to take yesterday’s lessons
without letting them harden
into sorrow’s slow grip.
Maybe learning
is simply the art of living
loosening, opening,
trying again,
trusting again.
Do we ever learn
to live life at its best?
Perhaps only
by living it.

You might not rate either effort but I would be interested in your take on the two pieces.