Is she really gone?
I tell myself she’ll come back
And dreadfully, I wait.

I still can’t wrap my head around it.
Tears cloud my eyes.
Have you forgotten your children?
Are you watching over us?
Do you still pray for us?
Will you ever come back?

Some days are too hard to bear.
Sometimes we just need a shoulder.
But ours have grown so heavy.
Even laughter feels hollow.
Will you ever come back?

You used to tell us:
“One day I’ll be gone, and you’ll miss me.”
Your words, once sharp.
Your death, like thunder.
We watched you slip away,
Piece by piece,
Day by day.

If I could time travel,
I’d run...
Far from this brutal truth.
Tell me…
Will you ever come back

I never lost faith in love, I was just scared
All around me I felt the loss in the air
The spring always baffled me;
For the winter was never there
In the basket of life, I felt the dread drawing near
The anticipation was vexing for a simple guy lying bare

I lost touch with my hobbies
I lost touch with my buddies
I lost being that funny guy
Who spoke so angelic; Truly Euphoric with a good sense of that comedic relief
I lost….
Lost the confidence, lost being the player
Lost my patience and a head full of loose screws
Time healed the wound but what about the ruse?
What about those sentiments? What about the bruise?
What about those promises? What about the cruise?
I was a little negligent but, what about you?

You talk about promises but all you do is ruse.
You talk about sentiments but all you do is refuse.
You talk about amendments but all you do is bruise.
You took away the sobriety and let it all loose
You took away the honesty and you took me for a fool
All I ever wanted I was to fall in love, thought you were the muse
I never lost faith in love, I just got used like a tool
                                                                                     -Asher Graves

My eyes once showed me a remarkable sight: it peered at this jaw dropping might
and my ears heard a voice that captures attention with each and every word it incites yet still my brain raced to inform me of a wonder that transforms imagination upon it's presence as if it were a millennial twilight but my soul insisted upon the woman who is a queen suited for my being, a design tailor made specifically for what heart has in mind.

(a poem in six stained glass windows)

I. BECOMING

I used to flinch when someone said
“You’re gonna be big someday,”
like—how big?
How loud?
How lonely?
How much of me
do I have to lose
to be loved that widely?

I kissed a boy once
just to see if I could still feel small.
I could.
then I wrote about it,
rhymed tongue with undone,
called it healing.

Some nights I Google myself
with the same hunger
you search a symptom.
Just hoping it’s not fatal.
Just hoping it is.
Just hoping there’s finally
a name for it.

My digital footprint is a shrine
to girls I outgrew but never buried,
their teenage poems
still written in Sharpie
on the back of my ribs.

My first book will ship with
a hand strung bracelet that says
“I survived myself.”

II. PERFORMING

Every time I tell the story
I’m a little more clever,
a little less heartbroken,
a little more
dangerous,
a little more wrong.

I have a bad habit
of leaving confessions in comment sections—
breadcrumbs on the internet floor,
for anyone sad enough
to mistake me
for a map.

I used to rehearse goodbyes in mirrors,
just to see if my eyes could lie
as well as my mouth did.
They could.
They still can.

They called me brave
for saying it out loud.
But I only said it
because the silence was louder.

The secret to staying soft
is deleting the parts
where I’m anything else.

I write best in hotel rooms
because they feel borrowed, too—
because no one expects
the towels to stay white
or the girl to stay quiet.

III. DISGUISING

“SENSITIVE” was printed on my sweatshirt
the night he told me
I hurt myself through him—
at least now he can’t say
I never gave a trigger warning.

Half of my closet is clearance rack chaos,
the other half is second-hand salvation—
each hanger a theory
of who I’ll be next.
Sometimes I dress like the version of me
I think he could’ve stayed for.

Every good body day feels like a plot twist,
like God gave me
a guest pass
to precious.

He said I was too much,
but whispered it like praise.
Now I underline his fears
in neon.

Some nights I still wake at 3:14
to texts I dreamt he sent—
all apologies
and no punctuation.

I screenshot compliments
like they’re prescriptions,
take two every six hours,
pray my body doesn’t reject them.
One day, I’ll ask the pharmacy
if they carry praise
in extended-release.

Every dress in my closet whispers
“wear me to his funeral,”
but he keeps refusing to die,
so I just overdress for brunch—
and sit facing the door
just in case.

IV. SEARCHING

I footnoted the grief.
Added asterisks to all my ‘I’m fine’s.'
Even my browser history
reads like a ******* fire.

My greatest fear isn’t that I’ll fail—
it’s that someday I’ll win
and realize the trophy feels
exactly like loneliness,
but heavier.

I read horoscopes for signs of relapse,
Googling “Do Libras experience nostalgia?”
at 5:15 a.m. like a drunk astrologer
pleading with the stars
to cut me off.

I used to edit Wikipedia pages
for characters who reminded me of myself,
changing their endings to
“she survives,”
“she gets out,”
“she burns the diary.”
They banned my IP
for excessive optimism.
I took it as a compliment.

V. RECKONING

The girls who follow me online
all think I have answers.
I don’t.
I have questions in fancy fonts
and delusions of grandeur
dressed as advice.

My therapist asks me to describe “progress,”
and I show her unsent messages,
leftover pills,
and a notebook filled with
poems written in my sleep—
and one that woke me up
Screaming.

Some of you highlight my breakdowns
like they’re quotes.
I get it.
I do it too.

VI. ALONE

My brain is a group chat
of all the selves I've ghosted,
texting in all caps
and sending GIFs that scream,
"Remember when you thought you'd be happy by now?"

If this poem goes viral,
tell them I made it big.
Tell them I got loud.
Tell them I wasn’t lonely.
Just alone
by design.
Like all cathedrals are.

I remember when the world was a honey *** —
sweet and endless,
when the biggest worry was a blustery day
and whether Piglet would blow away.
The sky was wide, and the ground was soft,
and the trees whispered secrets if you listened long enough.

Back then, I knew the Bare Necessities by heart:
A river’s hum, the sun’s warm kiss,
feet splashing through a world that never asked for more
than laughter and a little bit of wonder.
Baloo taught me how to sway with the breeze,
to let life be easy —
but no one told me the breeze could turn cold.

They don’t warn you when the Hundred Acre Wood starts to shrink,
when the trees lose their magic
and just become trees.
One day, you wake up and Christopher Robin isn’t coming back —
and you realize you have to be him now.
You have to pack up the toys
and leave the forest behind.

But I miss the forest.
I miss the rustle of leaves that sounded like adventure,
the way a cardboard box was a pirate ship,
or a rocket,
or a house where everything made sense.
Now my ships sink in student loans,
and my rockets crash into expectations.

They said growing up was an adventure —
but no one said it was like Shere Khan waiting in the dark,
all teeth and waiting for you to fail.
No one told me the man-village had rules:
Wear this. Be that. Don’t dream too loud.

But sometimes, when the night is quiet,
I hear Baloo singing in the back of my head.
Sometimes, when the wind shakes the trees,
I swear I see Tigger bouncing through the branches.
And I hold on to those echoes,
those soft, honeyed memories,
because the world gets heavy,
but childhood taught me how to fly.

So maybe I’ll keep a little bit of the forest with me.
Maybe I’ll hum the Bare Necessities when the bills pile up.
Maybe I’ll remember that a blustery day
is just an excuse to hold on tighter to the ones you love.

And maybe, when the world says grow up,
I’ll whisper back —
“Oh, bother.”

In the woods where the wind hums lullabies,
under branches that brush the sky,
lives a bear with a belly full of honey
and a heart stitched in childhood memory.

Winnie.
The. Pooh.
Not just a bear—
but the keeper of our early years,
the echo of laughter between storybook tears,
the soft-spoken truth in bedtime fears.

His house—
tucked under roots,
marked “Mr. Sanders” though we never asked why—
wasn’t just a home,
it was a world.

A mailbox too big, a door too small,
a doormat worn thin from welcoming all—
Tigger’s bounce, Piglet’s squeak,
Eeyore dragging his tail through each week.
A roof that knew the rhythm of rain,
walls that absorbed every growing pain.

And maybe we grew—
our knees outgrew scrapes,
our dreams got new shapes,
but there’s something about that crooked door
that still fits us,
even now.

Because Pooh’s house
was never made of wood and stone.
It was carved in imagination,
lined with pages and patience,
sealed in the syrup of simpler times.

A childhood shrine.
Where days had no clocks
and the only map we needed
was drawn in crayon and hope.

So here’s to the Hundred Acre home—
to the way it held us
when we didn’t know we needed holding.
To the bear who asked for nothing
but a little more honey,
and gave us
a little more magic.

I go back there
every time the world forgets
how to be kind.

Pooh reminds me.
Even now.
And maybe that's the thing about childhood—
it never leaves.

It just waits at the edge of the woods
with a rumbling belly,
and arms
wide
open.

I want to build a home with you
a place pieced together of words,
passed from you to me.

Eventually, the walls will breathe,
and they, too, will whisper
through our bones.

No matter how old we get,
they will still be there.

Although neither of us will
completely own this home,
what we will own
is how it makes us feel
and the memories we'll soon sit on
like furniture.

A place we'll come to spend
most of our time,
an inner standing
that it will house both of us,
no matter how we choose
to express ourselves.

The first meal we'll have,
I'll season with my smile
so you can taste what I taste
and feel what I feel
when I see you.

Then you'll understand
why I have nothing to hide,
why I open and include you
in different places in my life.

In this home I want to build with you,
there isn't a wind or a force
that could blow it down.

Even if we were to separate,
my hands will still remember
how we built it
brick by brick,

the mortar sealed
with a kiss from your lips

Well, babe, I’ve been let go
I am still learning how to let go.
My hands are so tired.
The people we once were,
the you I once knew,
evaporate into the rearview.

If you refuse to drive
hell, if you won’t even touch the wheel
we’ll keep speeding toward something too dark,
something neither of us can name.
I don't want that for us.

If not for me, then for you.
If I take my foot off the gas,
we go nowhere.
You said, let go.
But there is no way I can let go
without leaving you behind.

We don’t have to crash.
Babe, I’m tired.
We’ve driven too far past the last exit to turn around.
Skidded across the median more times than I’d like.
I don’t mind the potholes,
the chipped paint,
or the blurred lines.

but if we pull over,
I’m not getting back behind the wheel

From a bench in the park,
I saw myself walking.

And I thought,
he looks good,
he works, he writes,
he does what he loves,
he has something to offer.

What I offer has value,
I have value.