Grief comes in waves, they say. What they don’t say is that the unbearable weight of continuing to exist in a world without you comes in waves. The ache is constant. It seeps into my bones and penetrates every crevice of my body. My body refuses to continue. It hurts to breathe. My lungs remembered how it felt to be against yours in their warm embrace. And yet, somehow, I do continue. I move through the world like a ghost in my own skin, half here, half somewhere only you could find me. Everything I touch carries your afterglow, every shadow stretches with the shape of your absence. I keep waiting for time to soften what you left behind, but hours become days, and days become years, and still I feel you in the pauses between my heartbeats. If grief is love with nowhere to go, then let it drown me. Let these waves pull me under again and again, if only to return me to where you are. Grief comes in waves, they say.
Aug 7, 2025
Aug 7, 2025 at 10:42 AM UTC
An ant. Crushed on the sidewalk.
Perhaps he anticipated his fate—
the tremor of a sneaker
before the shadow fell.
Somewhere, a colony continues
Unaware and unfazed.
Would my colony continue?
Jun 23, 2025
Jun 23, 2025 at 3:18 PM UTC
The sound of the universe consummating
the chamber of my mind, a riot loud,
Thoughts collide, a violence of
Whispers, shouts, a perpetual crowd,
surely not withering.
A symphony of disorder,
Silence sought, but never found.
Feb 3, 2024
Feb 3, 2024 at 9:38 AM UTC
The beginning,
Like watching a movie,
Perfectly intertwined hearts.
During:
Clinging to you,
Begging you not to leave,
Abandon me like the others,
Is this what love looks like?
After you:
I’m in pieces on the kitchen floor.
My heart gushing like my wrist,
I guess forever meant something different to you.
Oct 1, 2021
Oct 1, 2021 at 12:16 PM UTC
I’m tired,
tired of trying to fit into a world,
that doesn’t seem to want me in it.
I promise you I’m trying.
Yet, everyday when I wake up it seems to get harder and harder.
My body is giving up,
It was slow at first and now it’s all at once,
like drizzling that is now a hurricane.
My lungs refuse to breathe,
Arms refuse to reach for the bottles that supposedly keep me sane,
Heart refuses to accept love,
I’m tired.
Aug 9, 2021
Aug 9, 2021 at 1:27 PM UTC
I’ve been trying to heal on my own,
trying to heal from the night you forced yourself into me.
The night I turned on myself,
lost who I was.
My body, a foreign and distant being.
She wasn’t mine anymore, you had ripped her from my grasp,
refusing to let go.
As much as I try, I’ll never have her fully back.
Jul 28, 2021
Jul 28, 2021 at 1:57 PM UTC
You almost always plan for your first kiss, you almost never plan for your last.
Jul 19, 2021
Jul 19, 2021 at 4:40 PM UTC
what does love look like the therapist asks
one week after the breakup
and i’m not sure how to answer her question
except for the fact that i thought love
looked so much like you
that’s when it hit me
and i realized how naive i had been
to place an idea so beautiful on the image of a person
as if anybody on this entire earth
could encompass all love represented
as if this emotion seven billion people tremble for
would look like a five foot eleven
medium-sized brown-skinned guy
who likes eating frozen pizza for breakfast
what does love look like the therapist asks again
this time interrupting my thoughts midsentence
and at this point i’m about to get up
and walk right out the door
except i paid too much money for this hour
so instead i take a piercing look at her
the way you look at someone
when you’re about to hand it to them
lips pursed tightly preparing to launch into conversation
eyes digging deeply into theirs
searching for all the weak spots
they have hidden somewhere
hair being tucked behind the ears
as if you have to physically prepare for a conversation
on the philosophies or rather disappointments
of what love looks like
well i tell her
i don’t think love is him anymore
if love was him
he would be here wouldn’t he
if he was the one for me
wouldn’t he be the one sitting across from me
if love was him it would have been simple
i don’t think love is him anymore i repeat
i think love never was
i think i just wanted something
was ready to give myself to something
i believed was bigger than myself
and when i saw someone
who probably fit the part
i made it very much my intention
to make him my counterpart
and i lost myself to him
he took and he took
wrapped me in the word special
until i was so convinced he had eyes only to see me
hands only to feel me
a body only to be with me
oh how he emptied me
how does that make you feel
interrupts the therapist
well i said
it kind of makes me feel like ****
maybe we’re looking at it wrong
we think it’s something to search for out there
something meant to crash into us
on our way out of an elevator
or slip into our chair at a cafe somewhere
appear at the end of an aisle at the bookstore
looking the right amount of **** and intellectual
but i think love starts here
everything else is just desire and projection
of all our wants needs and fantasies
but those externalities could never work out
if we didn’t turn inward and learn
how to love ourselves in order to love other people
love does not look like a person
love is our actions
love is giving all we can
even if it’s just the bigger slice of cake
love is understanding
we have the power to hurt one another
but we are going to do everything in our power
to make sure we don’t
love is figuring out all the kind sweetness we deserve
and when someone shows up
saying they will provide it as you do
but their actions seem to break you
rather than build you
love is knowing who to choose
-Rupi Kaur
Feb 2, 2021
Feb 2, 2021 at 12:48 PM UTC