u/Beginning-Zone-7093

​

I keep my thoughts

in teacups without bottoms

they drip truths onto the floor

where reason slips

I lost my mind

but it left a note

said back in five minutes

five minutes ago yesterday

my mind splits sideways

ideas hatch with too many wings

and nowhere polite to land

crack says the morning

crack says my smile

crack says the voice

that lives in the walls

and pays no rent

logic fell down the stairs

wearing mismatched socks

apologized to the floor

and kept going

once upon a shell

I was almost sensible

then someone knocked

too hard too often

tick tock

the clock is drunk again

pouring time into teacups

that refuse to stay full

or upright or quiet

not all cracks are failures

some are laughter escaping

some are light misbehaving

some are the sound

of a mind refusing its cage

I sip madness politely

pinkies up eyes wild

sanity blinking in Morse code

from the corner of the room

if I’m cracked

it’s because I was cooked too long

under someone else’s rules

I tried to be normal once

it tasted like cardboard

with ambition sprinkled on top

my brain does the splits

ideas leak out

yelling surprise!

and running off with scissors

and half a prophecy

they said hold it together

so I stapled joy to panic

and called it personality

crack pop

a thought hatches

with six eyes

and a laugh track

and no sense of indoor voice

this is not madness

this is curiosity unsupervised

I wear my cracks

like party hats

like exits

like invitations

because nothing whole

has ever danced properly

and if you see my sanity

tell it tea is ready

and it is deliciously wrong

every egg knows this

even the broken ones

you cannot hatch

without making a mess

There are days when life feels like a river in flood. Carrying me farther from the shore than I ever intended to drift. On those days I become quiet. I may not leave comments. I may not respond to every poem story or piece of writing that finds its way here. Sometimes I don't have the words. Sometimes I don't have the strength. Sometimes all I can do is sit silently and read.

But please know this. I read you.

I read the poems written at three in the morning when sleep wouldn't come. I read the stories stitched together from hope and heartbreak. I read the fragments the triumphs the questions and the confessions disguised as fiction.

Even when I leave no footprints behind I have walked through your words.

In a world that can feel increasingly disconnected you all have created a place where people still dare to be vulnerable honest and human. That is no small thing.

So if I seem absent I'm probably not gone. I'm still here somewhere between the lines. Cheering for your victories. Mourning your losses. Admiring your courage. And finding comfort in knowing there are others who understand what it means to turn feelings into words.

Thank you for sharing your hearts so freely. And thank you for making this corner of the world feel a little less lonely.

​

I walked the Grimwobble Trail at dusk

Because choices? I make them poorly

The air smelled faintly of grief and musk

So I muttered “We’re starting early”

A gloomling waddled up to me

A trembling ball of fear

It said “We’re doomed!” (so helpfully)

Then fainted by my ear

A thornsnicker fell from a branch above

With a grin too proud and wide

It tried to scare me for fun not love

Then tripped over its own snide

The driftwobblers slid through the brush

A limp and tired crew

They whispered secrets in a hush

I said “I overshare too”

A flarefox swallowed my leftover dread

Probably thought it was gourmet

It gagged, croaked out, “Is this expired?”

I said “Yes depression ages like clay”

The forest leaned in with hungry breath

It's grin sharp as a knife

And whispered “Child, you flirt with death”

I said “Sure but it’s not my type”

The trees began to gossip then

The wind stirring up some dirt

“She’s back again!” “She brought her pen!”

“Do you think she likes getting hurt?”

The darkness tried to loom at me

All teeth and spooky sway

I said, “Nice try, buddy,

But you’re basically foreplay”

By dawn I stumbled from root and rot

Alive, annoyed, and slightly bent

A gloomling clung to me crying a lot

Apparently now we co-rent

And when the shadows followed me home

Calling me “Queen of Bad Choices”

I decided to make it my throne

At least the forest had voices

The imaginary creatures above are from my fevered Mad Hatter-like imagination. I'm pretty sure they don't really exist 😏

Stop mistaking my scars

For proof that I cannot endure another battle

They are proof that I already did

Love should not stand at the mouth of my life

Deciding which fires I am allowed to touch

I am not porcelain

I am not a child wandering toward danger

I am the danger survived

The aftermath breathing

The woman who crawled out of burning things

Carrying pieces of herself in her teeth

And if I choose another storm

Let it be my storm

I deserve the dignity of my own risks

A lion watches the horizon

While his lioness sleeps beside him

The night is full of teeth

Hyenas laugh in the dark

Wind drags strange scents through the tall grass

And I wonder

Does a lion leave his lioness

To hunt alone beneath a wounded moon?

Does he hear her cry split the dark

And keep walking anyway?

Does he abandon the den

Because something needs him more?

Or does he stand?

Chest broad against the coming violence

Golden eyes awake while hers can finally close

Does he bare his teeth at the world

And say you do not touch what is mine?

I wonder if lions grow tired

Of carrying love on their backs

Perhaps some lions

Are so determined

To hold the sky up for strangers

They never see their own lioness

Collapsing beneath it

Because even the fiercest lioness

Cannot fight forever

Without somewhere safe

To lay her bones

And maybe that's the real question

Not whether a lion can roar

Any beast can make noise

But when the dark circles the den

When hunger comes

When fear comes

When winter comes

Does he stay?

I built us

no

no I built it right

I built it carefully I swear I did

I put mornings in the windows

and your laugh in the hallway light

and it was real

it was real it was real it was real

I had a future

I had it

I had it in my hands

like something alive and warm

and then something shifted

or snapped

or decided I wasn’t allowed to keep it

and I am standing in it now

standing in the remains of a life

that still has my fingerprints on it

the kitchen still knows your name

the bed still remembers the weight

of what was supposed to stay

the walls are still waiting for conversations

we never got to finish

I am furious I am furious I am…

I cannot say it cleanly

it won’t come out clean

because there is nothing clean

about losing a future

you already moved into

I was there

I was already there I was already there

do you understand what that does to a person

to be evicted from tomorrow

no warning

no explanation

just the sound of everything I loved

being rewritten without me

and I am screaming but it comes out wrong

it comes out as smoke

it comes out as shaking hands

and staring at my phone

like it might confess

you were supposed to stay

you were supposed to stay

you were supposed to stay

I keep saying it harder

harder

until it turns into something ugly

until it turns into something that bites back

and now there is nothing left to argue with

except ash

ash in my mouth

ash in my chest

ash where the future used to be real

I do not want acceptance

I do not want lessons

I do not want soft language for this kind of ending

I want the world to explain itself

I want it to tell me why it let me build something

just to set it on fire

while I was still living inside it

and if it won’t answer

then I will keep screaming at the blueprint

if I cannot have what I was promised

then I will make the ruins speak

and if the ruins refuse

I will become louder than they can survive

thud

thud

thud

soft beginnings small and brave

in the hush where dreams are made

beat fast

faster

fly

a laugh a spark a trembling sky

joy runs wild beneath my skin

I open I open I let it in

then

slow now

softer now

the ache comes low

like thunder far away

one beat one breath

one name I cannot say

thud

thud

the rhythm breaks

then mends

it hesitates

then dares again

hold

hold

let go

I learned the rhythm

of grief long ago

it slows it stumbles

it still goes on

a pulse made fragile

yet never gone

then light

flash

flame

love returns I feel it there

the rhythm climbs

the pulse forgives

the broken heart

still dares to live

beat fast

faster

fly

I am breath I am blood

a storm contained

a thousand songs

that sound like home

thud

thud

thud

each one different

yet the same

the music whispers

my secret name

and when it fades

it will not end

for even silence

learns to bend

around the echo

of where I’ve been