Healing Poetry - Tumblr Posts

Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary.

DEAD POETS SOCIETY dir. Peter Weir

The world is much too vast and much too beautiful to remember to be sad about you while watching the sun set on the ocean.

-After, July 2023

(s.m.)

Today, I stood at the edge of the world. I leaned against the chipped and discolored paint, bathed in the light of the setting sun and I dug my toes into the soft grass before the cliff. The waves lapped at the shore below me and I inhaled as the wind whipped my hair about my face.

There, beside a lighthouse before the sea, I decided I could stay for all eternity. I could be alone on that cliffs edge in the twilight of the setting sun forever, frozen in my quiet solitude, and I would be happy.

I-was-happy, because for one moment I did stand on that cliff for eternity, hidden from the world but saturated by it. It was all I knew for those couple minutes as my present stretched to infinity.

I was a lone goddess on my solitary and ever setting shore, and I was happy.

-Other, July 2023

(s.m.)

I looked at the stars tonight. I lay splayed open on the porch table, bathed in starlight and sticky with dew. I had to towel off the surface before I layed down but there was still a layer of dampness that stuck to me even through the thin blanket I wrapped around myself.

As I looked up, I constantly tugged on the edges of the blanket to cling to my curves but it kept rolling down and soon enough I stopped trying as the stars watched me and the cold air swept across my flesh.

I watched one shooting star go by, and then two, and then three, and more. One blazed across the heavens like a great ball of fire and sparks streaked in its wake, hanging there, in the sky, for a few seconds before fizzling out.

You crossed my mind multiple times. The imprint of you is still there and looking into that vast and bejeweled abyss I saw my own reflection and those things that haunt my eyes, like when your friends came over to my house and we lay in a pile on my porch stargazing even though the full moon made it hard to see. Or that time we lay under the stars in my ball dress and you told me you were sorry this wasn't going to last forever.

A slow sadness crept in when I felt antsy to go back inside. Before, nothing could take me from looking up at our speckled universe but I have been out of the habit so long. All I can feel is every time I got out of the car and I looked up and gasped. I would stare with my neck craned backwards and want to sit there forever, and I would have, until every time you grabbed my hand and hauled me inside and your future promise of stargazing was never answered.

You robbed me of my greatest love and I am still clawing to get it back and I don't understand how you ever thought a girl with stars in her blood should be hauled back inside like an escaped convict while rolling your eyes. Why did I let you, why didn't I fight you? Oh, why did you have to smother me?

The sky does not smother me, the air does not fight me, and those glittering stars kiss me with a love of which you were never capable.

-After, August 2023

(s.m.)

So often, I find my fingers reaching for you. Thumb paused over my phone screen, on any thread I left open, a small bridge. I sit there and I wait, staring, until I lose the nerve or gain the courage. A failure and a success.

Edit:

Less often, I find my finger reaching for you. My thumb no longer hovers over my phone screen, I cut all the threads, and the bridge sits crumbled and abandoned. I no longer sit there and wait, and when you do cross my mind I watch the thought flit away as fast as it came. My courage is present, and I think I will always be both a failure and a success in whatever way I choose to define the stakes.

-After, July 2023

(s.m.)

There was a strict dichotomy between the car ride to the bar and the car ride back. The kind of dichotomy that, if told, would leave the two girls on the ride there with only one response, and in the strongest sense of the word, bullshit.

-Beyond, September 2023

(s.m.)

When I cried over you for the millionth time a friend told me that one day you wouldn't cross my mind--that I wouldn't know why, and I wouldn't realize it then, but I would look back and you would be gone.

I don't know when in the last couple days something shifted but you haven't crossed my mind once. Somewhere in the space between I now, feel, nothing.

-Beyond, September 2023

(s.m.)

NO LONGER AFRAID

I finally know who to blame, For all the days spent in fear For all the nights filled with tears It’s not me but you who shall feel shame !

You thrived in your darkness, sowing doubt and despair, While I fought through the silence, gasping for air. It’s time for you to face the truth of your ways, The pain you inflicted, the endless dark days. Each whisper of doubt that you planted so deep, Now fuels my resolve; it awakens my sleep. I stand in the light, and I’m breaking your hold, No longer a story of fear to be told. As I turn from your darkness, a weight lifts at last, Goodbye to the moments that held me steadfast. Bittersweet is the farewell, for lessons you’ve taught, In the shadows you cast, a resilience I’ve sought. I grieve for the pieces of me you confined, Yet I step into freedom, leaving you behind. With each breath I take, I reclaim my own light, In this sorrowful parting, I’m ready to fight