You have been called 'too much'
just for feeling.
Silenced,
when all you wanted was to be heard.

You’ve fought the invisible.
You’ve overcome the sadness
that had no name.
You climbed out of the pit of depression.
You walked away from a love
that called you a burden
just for existing with emotion.

And yet —
or maybe because of all this —
you stand here now,
ready to take a step
greater than any step
you’ve ever taken before.

Perhaps what holds you back
is not lack of ability,
but the ache of becoming vast
after being made so small for so long.

Understand this, sweet girl:
no one sabotages themselves because they want to fail.
They sabotage themselves
because they fear rejection
for daring to shine.

And so your soul whispers:
“What if I could fly a little farther?”

Let your blood remind you
that you are still alive.
No soldier waits to feel confident
before entering battle.

I have conquered silence.
I have conquered erasure.
I have conquered the darkness of the mind.
Now I conquer my freedom —
because it is mine by right.

I will no longer live half of myself.

When everything is beautiful
and everything is strange
when everything is lifeless
and beautifully arranged

when everything is sorrowful,
and takes away your breath
when everything is living
but life's a silent death.

when everyone is laughing
but all you do is cry
when others are thriving
and you just want to die

when everything is passing
and you live in the past
holding onto strangers
that were never meant to last

always hoping
that reality will bend
and you won't talk to me
but I can always pretend.

always replacing
the void that's always there
so I won't be lonely
and I won't despair

something always changing
always inter-phasing,
I have many faces
for the many things I'm facing.

call me a kaleidoscope,
always cry and can't let go
I am a sad cube,
Inside a vacuum

These tears are hot and sting
I really like to sing
Whenever I feel like
I have nothing

It's all a silent death,
but it's not colorless
It's my internal void
that always gets destroyed

when everything is lifeless,
and beautifully deranged
and you're rid of your innocence
and wonderfully estranged.

when strangers marvel at you,
like a plate full of meat
and nobody loves me,
it's all just deceit.

when the world is so vast
but your room is so small
and the monsters are so big,
but your dreams are too tall.

when intimacy is formless,
and you're making love with ghosts
sitting in anger,
at a pain no one knows.

and with the simple pleasures,
you really mean the most
cause' although I'm suicidal,
I want to have a toast.

when your ex is everything,
but you're nothing but his muse,
and he calls you his 'friend'
after you were violently abused

when you forget your age,
as he forgets his
and your childhood is seamless
life's as if you were dreaming

but everything's a nightmare,
and everything is slow
and everyone is happy
and everyone lets go

but I move silently
I walk as slow as my breath
because time is passing
straight to the silent death.

I never set out to be a poet.
This was not a path I chose
it was the one I stumbled into
when my thoughts grew too heavy to carry
and my soul began to collect
the weight of years
like seabirds nesting on a lonely island,
like fur seals waiting out the endless storm.

I began writing as an escape,
a quiet place to spill the thoughts
that rattled in my head and ached in my heart.
Over time, it became my shelter
though no shelter is without its storms.
There are always those
who find reason to rain on your parade.

In the beginning, I was alone here.
And I was fine with that
for my thoughts were mine,
untouched, unshaped by anyone else.
But now, I am blessed
to hear the voices of strangers
who pause to read my words,
who leave behind their kindness,
their praise,
or simply a silent understanding.

I never wrote for applause
I wrote to build a fire
from the logs that surrounded my life
in a forest full of dead trees.
I wrote to clear the rot,
to drag out the fallen,
and to replant living roots.
I wrote to channel out new streams
from the clogged, muddy banks of my mind,
to let fresh waters flow
that in time will turn into flowing rivers
where once only stillness and decay remained.

Poetry became the soil where I planted
what I thought I had lost
feeling, connection, the fragile spark of hope.
And the people who read my words,
you who live in this realm of care and thought,
have given me more than I ever expected.
For as you read what I mine,
I read what is yours.
And sometimes I nod toward the sun and say,
See? I am not alone.

In your poems, I find echoes of my own wounds,
and in my own, some of you
find the reflection of your silent battles.
It is a strange comfort
like feeling the warmth of summer
brush against our skin
while snow still falls around us.

Poetry has allowed me to feel again
after years of neglect,
both from others and, far worse, from myself.
It is one thing to be locked in a room
and know you are trapped
it is another to walk the open world
and feel nothing at all.

We poets, I think,
often come to this land empty-handed.
We bring only the weight of our journeys
scars, rejections, brokenness,
the long nights of feeling worthless or unseen.
We come from the unknown to the unknown,
but somehow, we find each other here.

And in that meeting,
poetry gives us something
greater than gold or silver
it gives us belonging.
It gives us the chance to be understood,
if only for a heartbeat.

The path of a poet is not an easy one.
It begins with a few words,
or a flood of many,
that seem to mean little at first.
But as we walk in the shade of each other,
and in the sunlight of those who came before us,
we grow into something greater than ourselves.

I know I will not live forever
but I hope my words do.
I hope they find their way into the hands
of someone who needs them,
long after I am gone.
That, to me, is enough.