Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
Fiona Sep 13
Every day the voice grows louder, a low tide moving over the edges of my life until there is almost nothing left but the hush it leaves behind. It does not shout; it never needs to. It leans close in the quiet hours — when the city exhales, when the kettle has gone cold on the stove — and speaks with the steady softness of someone who knows every fracture inside me. Its words are not cruel. They are velvet-soft invitations, the kind that makes you forget the jaggedness, of the world for a moment and imagine only the ease of surrender.

There is a warmth to it, and that is the strangest part. I find myself startled by how gentle it feels, like a hand at the small of my back guiding me towards something that will end the ache without explanation. Around other people I have known harshness that didn’t pretend it was anything else. With them there were arguments and doors slammed and the brittle noise of disappointment. This is different; this is a quiet that hums a lullaby and calls me by a name I used to like. In another life — or in another dream — it is not Death at all but a lover waiting in a doorway with a coat in their hand, patient, familiar, and impossibly kind.

I want to lean into it as you would into a familiar shoulder. I imagine running my palms along its calmness and finding there the kind of rest I have tried to find in strangers’ eyes. There’s a softness in the idea of being held so completely that the need to fight for air fades, and when the thought comes it does not arrive with accusations but with an understanding so thorough it almost feels like mercy. In my mind it becomes a room with low light and no questions; it becomes the end of the long, useless performance of holding myself together for people who never learned how to hold me back.

And still, even as the comfort seeps into my bones, there is a tremor, a recognition of the impossibility of it all. To let myself lean fully is to cross a line I have been warned about, to step into a hush that is both a promise and a disappearance. Yet I imagine the embrace anyway: the quiet ripple of its presence threading through my chest, a tide that lifts me free from all the jagged edges I carry and all the expectations I have stitched onto my skin. It is not violent, not demanding, not impatient — it is a patience that knows I will come, eventually, in my own time.

I think of all the nights I have spent alone, staring at walls that could not listen, and I understand that this is the voice that has been waiting. Its gentleness is a kind of violence against my loneliness, dismantling it piece by piece until the walls fall away, and I am left with nothing but the hush — nothing but the undeniable clarity that somewhere, in the softest corner of the world, I am seen, I am known, I am held. And for a moment, that is enough.

The more I listen, the more I remember — not faces or names, not places exactly, but sensations, brief moments I thought I had forgotten. The smell of rain on asphalt, the warmth of a stranger’s hand in a city that never stops moving, the echo of music I can no longer place. Each memory trembles when Death speaks, and in its voice I feel the fragile thread that connects them all: the ache of being alive, the wonder of having survived it. It is both cruel and merciful, the way it uncovers the tenderest parts of me and holds them without comment.

Sometimes I imagine speaking back. I imagine asking Death if it has known what it is like to carry a body through years that never learned gentleness, to hold a heart so bruised it forgets it can beat at all. I imagine its reply, soft and knowing: that it has known, that it has always known, and that it is here now, waiting, patient, unwavering. I picture the quiet room stretching around us like a cathedral of a hush, each breath a candle flame, each heartbeat a soft echo of something I almost dared to hope for.

There is a strange courage in this imagining, a boldness in feeling the pull without needing to act. I do not have to move; I do not have to surrender. I only have to let the voice settle around me like smoke, let it fill the corners of my mind that have been empty for too long, and notice what happens when the world finally stops insisting that I am not enough. And in noticing, I feel something like grace: the sharp edges of existence dull, the questions fall silent, and the ache softens into a kind of recognition. I exist. I am here. I am known.

And sometimes, just sometimes, I reach toward it — not fully, not yet — and the hush leans closer, and I am home.
Fiona Sep 2
I was never chosen for belonging.
Not by the world, not by blood, not by any hand that ever touched me.
I walk among the living as an exile,
a phantom dressed in flesh,
a vessel meant only to pour itself empty
so others may drink and leave.

I am the altar and the offering.
I tear my own spine into kindling,
set myself ablaze just to keep their shadows warm.
I hand over my ruin as though it were holy bread,
because if love will not have me,
perhaps sacrifice will.

And pain;
pain has been my only covenant.
It baptized me.
It married me.
It crowns me each morning with thorns
and cradles me each night in its iron womb.
It is not a wound; it is my inheritance.
It is not a visitor; it is my god.

Yet still;
there is a howl in me.
A storm that wants to rip heaven in half.
I want to pound my fists against the firmament
until the stars rain down like glass.
I want the earth to feel the shudder of my grief,
to know that I am here,
bleeding, burning, begging..
and no one sees me.

But I know the sentence.
They will spit their verdicts like venom.
“Attention seeker.”
“Coward.”
“Spectacle.”
They will say despair is a theater,
agony a mask,
death a performance.

So I swallow the scream.
I choke on silence until it poisons me.
And I rot.
I rot in daylight,
smiling with dead teeth,
while my insides collapse like a  set on fire.

Tell me—
when does it end?
When does this body, this prison,
finally crack open?
When will my lungs sigh their last,
my skull quiet itself,
my eyes close not in weariness
but in deliverance?

I curse the sleepers in their graves.
I envy their soil, their silence, their eternal stillness.
I despise their peace even as I crave it.
Why should they rest while I remain chained,
dragging myself through the days like carrion?

I am tired.
Tired of this cursed breath,
this endless theater of pain.
I have known nothing but wounds,
and I desire nothing but the abyss.

If there is a god,
let him hear me.
If there is a hell,
let it open now.
If there is mercy in this universe,
let it be the mercy of oblivion.

Because I am finished.
And all I have ever loved,
all I have ever trusted,
all I have ever worshiped—
is pain.
Fiona Mar 15
Lilies mean I dare you to love me,
Yet no one ever dared before.
She wore unworthiness like armour,
Too afraid to ask for more.

But then their souls collided softly,
A feeling whispered, old yet new.
As if their atoms once had danced,
As if her heart already knew.

Stargazers were her favourite flowers,
Pink petals stretching toward the sky.
She never thought she’d be deserving,
Yet he brought them—without a why.

He told her love was hard to give,
That words don’t spill from heart to tongue.
But every act, each quiet moment,
Spoke of love he left unsung.

The day he gave her stargazers,
She learned that she could bloom as well.
That love was not a war to fight,
But something safe where she could dwell.

Still, they have never said the words,
Three small ones locked behind their lips.
But love is felt in all the ways
That words may falter, break, or slip.

And if they never pass through her,
Then may they come from him instead.
For she could never bear to hear
“I love you” from another’s breath.
Fiona Mar 15
The air hums with unseen eyes,
pressing against my skin like ghosts of unspoken words.
I do not know if they are real,
or if it is only my own mind feeding me these lies,
splitting at the seams,
a quiet unraveling.

I try to name this feeling,
but it slips through my fingers,
a silver thread lost in the dark.
It swells inside me,
a tide with no shore,
a song with no voice,
an echo that answers to nothing.

I fear the hollow behind my ribs,
the stranger who lingers in my reflection,
watching, waiting,
as if they know something I do not.
I fear the quiet hands of time,
folding me into something I cannot bear to be,
softly, gently, as if I won’t notice.

I dream of dissolving,
of fading like breath on a mirror,
becoming dust,
becoming light,
scattering into the arms of the cosmos,
where even sorrow turns celestial.
Perhaps there, I would not ache.
Perhaps there, I would not be.

I am tired—
of the weight in my bones,
of the ache stitched into my name,
of carrying this endless dusk
where no dawn ever follows.
Even sleep offers no escape,
only the same restless descent,
only the same hushed grief.
Fiona Mar 5
Warmth, joy, a love so true,
Emotions I never knew—
Not until my soul met yours,
Not until you opened doors.

I once believed in fairy tales,
Foolish dreams that always failed,
But then I saw the way you stare,
And found my home within your care.

You say the words don’t come with ease,
But love speaks soft in moments seized.
Your smallest acts, the way you see
The parts of me I thought unseen.

Your laughter lifts, your smile shines,
A light that feels forever mine.
I’d fight the world, I’d stand so tall,
Just to see you through it all.

I know that nothing gold can stay,
That time may steal this love away,
Yet still, I beg the stars above—
Make you my endless, only love.

For though your lips stay quiet still,
Your heart speaks louder than your will.
And though these words I dare not say,
I’ll love you more with each new day.
  Feb 19 Fiona
Meera
He doesn't burn photographs
He doesn't join therapy sessions
He doesn't smoke too many cigarettes
Nor he drown himself into alcohol
He scratches his wounds daily
And never let them heal
He doesn't try to get rid of the pain
Instead he let it grow on him
He waters the seed of sorrow with his tears
He feeds it with the manure of old memories
He takes it to sleep with him
And nurtures it in himself
Till the moment when every single drop of his blood gets replaced by this pain
Until his fragile heart can bear no more
And his soul starts overflowing with emotions
That's when he dip his pen into this pain
And empty his heart on a piece of paper
He bares his soul for us to feel
He creates poetry that the world would cherish for centuries to come
That's how true poetry comes into existence
Fiona Feb 19
overflowing, my heart, a torrential tide,
Words falter, emotions I cannot confide.
To love so fiercely, yet know it will not stay,
A cruel, aching truth that will not go away.

my heart, unbridled, runs wild toward you,
defying my reason, defying what is true.
each offering of love met with barren air,
An endless void, a silence unfair.

I cry out, scream, a battle in vain,
fighting shadows absorbing the pain.
the emptiness grows, a consuming abyss,
feeding on love, on moments I miss.

oh, how I long for your warmth, your care,
but the universe answers with desolate stares.
this love is a tether, a soul bound chain,
a curse unbroken, a beautiful pain.

to love this deeply is to burn and bleed,
to nurture a flower that turns to a ****.
yet still, I cling to the ghost of your name,
bound by the fire, consumed by the flame.

a love so eternal , a wound so profound,
a curse the echoes, no solace found.
but in this despair, a paradox lies,
for even in ruin, my heart cannot disguise.

So I bear this torment, this ache, this fight,

A beacon of love in an endless night.

For though it destroys, it is a truth I can not flee:

Loving you deeply is the curse that is me.
Next page