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People say to me:
“I’m so sorry you’re heartbroken.
I hope you heal soon.”

But what they don’t understand is,
I am grateful to have loved so deeply
that even heartbreak
doesn’t taste bitter,
and that even sorrow
has a sweetness to it.

Great loss can only come
from losing something truly great.
So I welcome the weight,
because I know
I once held the rarest,
most exquisite form of love.

I am privileged to have known it,
to have understood
what I was given.

And yes, sometimes it hurts.
But sometimes,
the memory of your smile
lights up the darkest corners of my soul.

I still feel our love
swirling in the quiet spaces between thoughts,
like a steady, unspoken truth.

Sacred love accepts the pain.
It does not twist it
into anger or resentment.

It carries it
as witness
to the heaven
we once lived.
Follow me on instagram @incurable_poet
This morning,
i felt that
nature, too,
celebrates
the birth of
her saplings-
lifting their
tender heads
toward the sun
and scraping
them against
the smudged,
beheaded
moon.
I've walked your floor

sat beside you in candlelight
looking at photos
scattered across the floor.

you remembering names
and people and prayers
I had long forgotten.

you are the dancer
who glides this loner
through sorrows and the stars,
across the mist of moments
most treasured

where in the stillness between kisses
promises are kept
and the warmth of your hand on my cheek
felt in places to real to touch.

your love asks for nothing
and when you smile your quiet gift to me

tender one, every breath I take is loving you.
I stepped out in the world

in search for my place

in the world of colours,

lost, somehow found my way

in the little known world

of literature.

While still surviving

in this world of words,

unsure what my future holds.
I never set out to be a poet.
This was not a path I chose
it was the one I stumbled into
when my thoughts grew too heavy to carry
and my soul began to collect
the weight of years
like seabirds nesting on a lonely island,
like fur seals waiting out the endless storm.

I began writing as an escape,
a quiet place to spill the thoughts
that rattled in my head and ached in my heart.
Over time, it became my shelter
though no shelter is without its storms.
There are always those
who find reason to rain on your parade.

In the beginning, I was alone here.
And I was fine with that
for my thoughts were mine,
untouched, unshaped by anyone else.
But now, I am blessed
to hear the voices of strangers
who pause to read my words,
who leave behind their kindness,
their praise,
or simply a silent understanding.

I never wrote for applause
I wrote to build a fire
from the logs that surrounded my life
in a forest full of dead trees.
I wrote to clear the rot,
to drag out the fallen,
and to replant living roots.
I wrote to channel out new streams
from the clogged, muddy banks of my mind,
to let fresh waters flow
that in time will turn into flowing rivers
where once only stillness and decay remained.

Poetry became the soil where I planted
what I thought I had lost
feeling, connection, the fragile spark of hope.
And the people who read my words,
you who live in this realm of care and thought,
have given me more than I ever expected.
For as you read what I mine,
I read what is yours.
And sometimes I nod toward the sun and say,
See? I am not alone.

In your poems, I find echoes of my own wounds,
and in my own, some of you
find the reflection of your silent battles.
It is a strange comfort
like feeling the warmth of summer
brush against our skin
while snow still falls around us.

Poetry has allowed me to feel again
after years of neglect,
both from others and, far worse, from myself.
It is one thing to be locked in a room
and know you are trapped
it is another to walk the open world
and feel nothing at all.

We poets, I think,
often come to this land empty-handed.
We bring only the weight of our journeys
scars, rejections, brokenness,
the long nights of feeling worthless or unseen.
We come from the unknown to the unknown,
but somehow, we find each other here.

And in that meeting,
poetry gives us something
greater than gold or silver
it gives us belonging.
It gives us the chance to be understood,
if only for a heartbeat.

The path of a poet is not an easy one.
It begins with a few words,
or a flood of many,
that seem to mean little at first.
But as we walk in the shade of each other,
and in the sunlight of those who came before us,
we grow into something greater than ourselves.

I know I will not live forever
but I hope my words do.
I hope they find their way into the hands
of someone who needs them,
long after I am gone.
That, to me, is enough.
12 August 2025
Why I Write Poetry
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
A warm wind touched my face.
I walked out into the open space,
I saw a blurry, fading horizon.
Somewhere, you are,
I am here, after a sleepless night,
Writing another reflection,
Tired like an empty battery.

I do not like the masks that shout.
The fight over who is right.
I do not want an analysis.
I touch the bark of the tree,
I hug the birch with my arms.
I see its white pages,
Written with irregular lines,
Torn, fluttering in the wind,
Which I cannot read.

Her eyes look straight into me,
They understand –
How well they understand me.
The rustle of leaves lessens the tension.
Autumn will come soon,
The summer wind whispers to me:
This country, this language,
These people, these doubts.

This is not blind luck,
This is your blessing,
Purple, rainy months, a fleshy heart,
Falling hair, joy when relief comes,
Crying into a pillow –
So as not to disturb another’s dreaming
About the so-called reality.

Bare feet touch the ground.
I tread carefully on the edge of worlds,
To be both here and there
With my integrity.
I am everything and nothing.
I am gestures, epilepsy,
The belief that I see human thoughts,
Inconsistent with what they say.

Blue, sun, and somewhere you.
How good that you stayed.
When everyone was saying:
She is different,
She talks to ghosts.
You stayed, showing me
Your true face.
across my face.

I saw spring coming
in the meadow
where the wildflowers
whisper to the wind.

found freedom on a snowcapped mountain top,

smiled to the child offering violets
cradled in her tiny hands

and when she smiles to me

her joy ripples like sunlight
across the sea of love.

the curtain is lifted.

the soul becomes visible

(always in the wild places
in my heart.)
My unrest is steeped in humility.
Fear, though tamed,
still begs for a trace of attention.

I loved you
until the final heartbeat;
I saw a tomorrow that would anoint
the future.

You returned my dream,
untouched, unmarked by use.
A crumpled memory preludes
reality.

A sold tomorrow echoes the pride
so difficult to confront.
Reality is the mistake—
on its knees
I lay my fear.

Perhaps tenderness
will make dawn more bearable?
Perhaps truth
will break free from longing’s reign?
I don’t want to be a life
that arrived too late for its own beginning.

The body clings tightly
to the past.
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