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Cadmus May 16
It doesn’t scream.
It whispers
soft as ash
settling
where fire used to be.

It lives
in the pause
before you speak your truth,
in the mirror
you half avoid
each morning.

It wears your voice
in rooms where you shrink,
calls itself “just tired,”
“just busy,”
“just fine.”

It is the bruise
you forget to touch,
the silence
you defend
with a smile too wide.

No blood.
No scar.
Just the slow unraveling
of who you were
before you believed
you were not enough.
Shame is a quiet architect of silence, often unspoken, yet deeply rooted. These verses aim to give voice to what hides in the dark and light to the path of healing.
Ellie Hoovs May 15
Hat
He handed it to me when I was 25,
with a Cheshire cat smile,
knowing it wasn't my team,
and liking it all the better for it.
I wore it,
reluctantly,
the Kelly green of it a traffic cone
warning others not to get too close
brim worn thin
on the edges
where he was always
making sure it sat
...just.
right.
until the shamrocks stitched to the side
could no longer mask the shackles
I tore it off
set it ablaze in the front yard
and let my soft ginger curls
fly free in the breeze,
finally mine again.
Kalliope May 15
Maybe if I let people in
I wouldn't be so lonely like this
No one to turn to, no where to cry,
I just lay here and fester while the days go slowly by

I really don't have real friends, none that I can talk to everyday
Almost thirty years of people pleasing and they all watch me decay
It's dramatic, this I know,
But it's where my mind tends to go,
When the lights are low,
And I feel even lower
Ellie Hoovs May 14
Snow falls, weaving lace from a forlorn sky
that caresses the tender edges of sand dunes.
Indigo waves buoy lamented lullabies,
filling empty drifting bottles
with salted cold foam.
Gulls screech,
shrill with curses
at the winking lighthouse
taunting the winged rats
with its cold, unreachable glow.
Silver threads of moon beams
luminesce the stardust under my feet;
my toes sink in as I pirouette
among other forgotten things:
bits of shell, braids of seaweed,
and stones of glass made smooth
by the ever-changing tides.
A clock washed ashore,
devoid of hands,
chimes notes for the unknown hour.
My footprints leave a path behind me
softly whispering my name
to the wind that welcomes me home.
You've caused me pain and disappointment,                                            
                                                                ­                                                    
     time and again and in that
 moment,                                                        ­                
                                                ­                                                                 ­       
  I want to hurt you and see you writhe,                                              
                                                                ­                                                  
  make you feel no one 's on your
  side                                                          ­                                          
  Walk away when you reach out to
me,                                                             ­                                                                 ­                                                                 ­                                   
Bare my teeth and make you bleed                                                            ­          
                                                                ­                                              
Show you my love
inconsistently,                                                  ­                                          
                      ­                                                                 ­                             
let you feel how you treat
me                                                               ­             
                                                                ­                                            
Ignore you when you try to
engage,                                                          ­                      
                                                                ­                                               
stomp my feet and not act my
age                                                              ­                  
                                                                ­                                                 
      Point my finger at you so I can
blame,                                                           ­                                         
                                                                ­                                                  
tell everyone so you'll feel
ashamed                                                          ­                      
                                          ­                                                                 ­     
Give you nothing but take all you
have,                                                            ­                                          
                      ­                                                                 ­                           
tell you you're weak because you feel
bad                                                              ­                    
                                                                ­                                          
Destroy your trust and your will to
live,                                                            ­      
                                                          ­                                                        
  take all I want and all that you give
This is life with a narcissist, manipulating, gaslighting, controlling you while you jump through hoops to please someone who is never going to be happy. They take everything from you in efforts to keep you down & are happy to do it.
The night we met
That night when it was raining
That sorrowful and pitiful night
I can’t ever forget your face
There was fear in your eyes
I can’t ever forget your tearful eyes
The eyes I saw that night
I can’t ever forget your cute little hissing you did when I tried to help you
I regret I didn’t feed you milk that night
I regret I didn’t play with you
I regret those eyes that were trying to tell me something I didn’t understand
I wish to understand that “something”
I wish I could have helped you that night
I wish to be with you more
I wish we had met sooner
I wish we could meet in the afterlife
I don’t want forgiveness
But I want to tell you that
There is a person
Who will remember you for his whole life
These are not words
These are feelings
I wish I could have told you that night.
This poem is about the little creature I met that night
Vicky Donald May 11
She was born where the walls would tremble and sway,

Where love came in shouting, then drifted away.

Where silence could cut like a whispering blade,

And kindness was rare as the warmth of May.



Her mother drank storms and let them cascade

On young, aching shoulders, alone and afraid.

She never asked thunder to fall from the skies,

But still bore the weight under tear-salted eyes.



She learned that trust is a word carved out in stone-

Left out in the rain, eroded, alone.

She gave hers to hands that vowed to stay,

But they shattered her trust and then walked away.



At thirteen, her world didn’t fully fall down,

But something inside her refused to be found.

She stopped seeking mirrors, stopped seeking sound,

Felt sure that no soul would hear if she drowned.



Bur deep in the dark, she found ink and a page-

A space to release her quietest rage.

She wrote to survive, let sorrow flow,

To dream of a world where kind hands would grow.



word upon word, she built from the pain,

A self, made of fire, of hope, of the rain.

She grew-not just older-but fiercely and right,

A warrior shaped in the absence of light.



Now she’s a mother, a woman, a flame,

Who shields her own from sorrow and shame.

She listens, she holds, she stands strong and true,

Becoming the love, she never once knew.



The past still whispers, but cannot command;

It doesn’t define her, it doesn’t stand.

She writes-not to flee, but to chart the climb,

Each line a reminder: she rose every time.



She tells the girl hidden deep in her mind,

“We made it, we lived, we rose, and we shined.

The monsters are silent-they don’t get the end.

We write the last word, with strength as our pen.”
Charmour May 10
Im a daughters who never
Says anything to her family.

Who is never asked whether my heart is  okay or not.

Even tho i want to tell everyone many things abt my hard days and still there are many things in my heart.

I heal my own wounds, I fight my insomnia, every night is filled with taers and overthinking.

But when the morning comes,
I fake my smile and laughter :/
To live is to suffer.
To love is to suffer.
To create is to suffer.

Existence itself is stitched with sorrow,
but in its aching seams,
blooms something beautiful.

So we must choose —
choose carefully
who, or what, we are willing to suffer for.

And I chose you.

I chose to cradle the weight of your name
in the hollow of my chest,
to love you through the good, the bad,
the moments that left us broken and bleeding,
the silences heavy as tombstones.

I sit now, in the wreckage of what was,
thinking of forever —
the whole nine yards,
a life I painted in the colors of you.

But you're not here anymore.
You exist only in fleeting fragments,
ghost-thoughts
of laughter in a room now silent,
of touches I’ll never feel again.

And I am the reason.
I carry that like a stone in my gut,
a burden I won't set down.

Yet, I choose to be better,
to climb out of myself,
to carve light from the grief.

Because as long as my lungs rise and fall,
as long as my heart dares to beat,
I’ll remember —
your arms were the only home
I ever truly knew.

And maybe one day,
this suffering will shape me
into someone worthy
of loving like that again.
.......life
Mariana May 8
i used to write
poems about you
all the time
you didn't know tho
(you didn't know my love)

but it worked
out for us two
didn't think
it'd be different too
(different from the others)

so i wrote
and i wrote
then i stopped at last
now i can say the words
now i can finally say it to you
i love you
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