Time operates quietly.
Most people pass through
without resistance.
I was thirteen
the first time a moment left before I did.
The afternoon stayed in place.
Light still on the floor.
Laughter still using the room.
But it no longer included me.
That was my introduction to time.
Everything intact.
Permission revoked.
The knowing arrived all at once.
This exact arrangement
would never assemble again.
Since then, nostalgia has learned my name.
One day,
the child you were
stops reporting for duty.
Not missing.
Dismissed.
No ceremony.
No farewell.
You don’t notice
the last time you play,
the last ordinary miracle,
until it has already
set somewhere permanent.
A few feel the pressure first.
The bend.
The thinning.
While things are still present.
Parents become elders
without announcing it.
Rooms misremember their size.
Voices arrive slightly altered.
I carry the ache
on behalf of those who move untouched,
unaware
they are already artifacts.
The year arrives.
Not new.
Just unused.
Watching
for recognition.
There is a pause.
Then everything continues
slightly altered.
Jan 5
Jan 5, 2026 at 6:58 AM UTC
The Wildflower Vow
by Shani Barnard
He said he loved me,
and I wore those words like a necklace—
tight enough to bruise,
too pretty to take off.
I was the cathedral.
He lit one candle and left,
while I burned down to the ground—
like a string unravelled
from the hem of my own devotion.
I loved him.
I did.
I do.
I still.
I still.
God—I still.
I waited.
I waited.
I waited.
Not for him to come—
but for the world to let him.
He says I’m it—
the right one, the perfect match.
Says fate wrote us in ink.
But he won’t fight for it.
Not now.
Not while he’s losing to himself.
My bones reach
for a light that’s gone—
like wildflowers grasping
for a sun that won’t return.
His laugh filled me with light.
His silence emptied me faster.
I held open doors
in every lifetime I could imagine.
I softened my voice.
I swallowed my need.
I became so small,
even my own body forgot me.
I gave.
And gave.
And gave.
And they called it beautiful—
but never stayed.
My love is too much.
Too soon.
Too soft.
Too heavy.
I was made to love like this.
And they were made to leave.
He picked me like a wildflower.
Gently.
As if he knew I might not stay.
The wind took me from his hands—
not all at once,
but slowly.
I slipped.
He didn’t fight.
Not hard enough.
A wildflower,
begging to be picked.
Never meant for a vase.
I do.
I do.
I do.
Not in vow—
but in ruin.
Let there be a version of us
that makes it.
Let him see this.
Let him know.
Let him ache.
Let him break open,
like I did—
in quiet,
in kindness,
in full,
and without warning.
Jan 1
Jan 1, 2026 at 11:52 AM UTC
I wonder—
do the trees feel empty in winter,
like abandoned cathedrals with hollowed arches,
their prayers carried off by wind?
Do they mourn the once-gold choir of leaves,
or do they wait—
hands lifted in quiet faith,
hope braided into their roots
like a forgotten hymn?
Does the moon know she is not always whole?
That we love her in pieces—
when she is a shard of silver,
a lost earring in the sky.
Does she ache, too,
a lantern adrift in a sea of indifference,
admired but never held?
There is beauty, I think,
in what is missing—
in the pause before bloom,
in the ache of becoming.
The tree, the moon—
they teach us how to stay
even when we are not full.
Maybe they know.
Maybe they don’t.
But still—they remain.
And maybe that is enough.
May 1, 2025
May 1, 2025 at 11:39 AM UTC
To feel deeply in this world is to bleed slowly.
It is to walk through fire with bare feet
while others praise the virtue of numbness.
They say: Don’t love too much.
Don’t care too loudly.
Don’t be the one who stays when it’s easier to leave.
But I have never been able to touch halfway.
My love is ruinous.
I enter like a cathedral collapses—
all at once, with smoke and sacred noise.
I fall in love like it’s a calling,
like God Himself whispered their name into my ribs
and told me:
Here. This one. Burn for this one.
And I do.
Even when the world hands me a thousand reasons not to.
Even when it tells me connection is a game,
hearts are currency,
and tenderness is a flaw
to be corrected.
But I was not made for apathy.
I was not made for clever texts and ghosted evenings.
I was made for aching truth,
for eyes that don’t look away,
for conversations that scrape the soul clean.
I do not want half of anyone.
I want the whole,
even if it wounds me.
Because what is the point of living
if we are not willing to suffer
for something sacred?
They say:
You care too much.
As if it were a weakness.
As if they have not read the Psalms—
as if Christ did not sweat blood in the garden
out of love for a world
that would spit in His face.
There is glory in feeling it all.
Even when it rips you open.
Especially when it rips you open.
Let them scoff.
Let them sleepwalk through their half-lives.
I will keep loving like it matters.
Because it does.
And someone must remember.
May 1, 2025
May 1, 2025 at 10:32 AM UTC
There are days
my chest burns
with a thousand unnamed feelings,
and I swear,
if I don’t find a place to put them,
I’ll split open
from the inside.
I romanticize everything—
the way light moves through a curtain,
the way someone laughs
without knowing I’m listening—
and it wrecks me.
I carry every goodbye like a funeral.
I fall in love with strangers
for no reason
but the way they exist.
The world wants me dull.
Wants me quiet,
contained.
But I’m all crescendo—
too loud,
too tender,
too much.
And oh,
where—
oh, where
to pour all this softness,
when no one knows how to hold it.
May 1, 2025
May 1, 2025 at 7:46 AM UTC