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701 · Oct 2021
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It feels permanent because it is
It feels impossible at times
It feels like a train moving at full steam
Heading for the broken bridge
359 · Sep 2021
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Some days will be mundane
and some will be profoud
All I know for sure is I will
love you through all of it
310 · Oct 2021
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I can't seem to find the proper stream
The correct level of flow for emotions
Enough to make it known I care
But limited enough to be palatable
299 · Sep 2021
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You are the mourner
The one who carries the weight
The vast mind filled
with faces of agony
142 · Oct 2021
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Forgiving myself for my shortcomings

Accept what is perceived as failure

Nobody is perfect I suppose

Reconcile my thoughts about me
127 · Oct 2021
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You need a break
Time alone
Moments away from me
I didn't mean to smother you
I made it another day
Without bothering you
Are you happier now?
I hope you're happier now.
123 · Oct 2021
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There you are in your bed
Watching as the sun comes up
Slowly cascading across the room
Soon enough it's noon
Suddenly it's 4
Eventually the sun is going down
It falls low enough there is darkness
You're sitting in that sweet spot
The time when the sun is gone
The moon hasn't glanced down yet
Eventually the room is filled
With the softest white light
Here you are at midnight
Wondering where the day has escaped to
But that sweet spot? Total darkness
The kind that makes it feel like
It's just you and the universe?
That's what it feels like.
116 · Sep 2021
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Tell me again about the birds and bees
The sweet song about how it's just
you and me
112 · Sep 2021
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I bloom best at night
Deep in darkness
Not a natural sound to be heard
Just the city fights
Sirens on repeat
Triple check the locks
110 · Oct 2021
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I have always promised to stay
conscious in times I was unwanted.
That's my fault.
For believing in hope,
always holding a strand,
even if it was the tiniest.
Holding it tight and waiting,
waiting to be wanted.
105 · Sep 2021
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Sorrow can make your head heavy
Empty your heart out
Deliver unsafe feelings
As if at any moment you'll
become just a fleeting memory
105 · Sep 2021
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It's not about the hurting
about the grief
It's about being left alone in it
alone in that pain
Alone to exist in the grief
105 · Sep 2021
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Constantly apologizing
for who I am to others
Ashamed of the place
I wish so deeply to be
Yell to the clouds
"Oh to be unique!"
105 · Sep 2021
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Sometimes goodness in your heart wont matter
The softness of your soul will be overlooked
The force driving your intention misread
104 · Sep 2021
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It's as if my skin has been rubbed raw
My care feels helpless
Stopped in its tracks by heat
A burning push
Forgotten eventually
100 · Oct 2021
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I wish you were here
I'd tell you about my day
There really wouldn't be much to say
But at least I'd get to say it
Say it to someone other than the wind
I worry you'll forget my face
It is still the warmest color for you
98 · Oct 2021
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People assume grief is only intertwined with death.

That somehow you can only feel deep grief or sorrow when you experience the greatest loss.

Yet sometimes grief sneaks in when you miss something deep enough that it resembles death.

When it feels like a loss that takes part of your soul with you.
97 · Sep 2021
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You left me to fend off the intruders alone
Quietly left while I fought back
Telling them it wasn't right, I'm yours
Showing them the song and dance
The slowest waltz to explain the beat
Only to realize I was explaining alone
I was fighting by myself
95 · Sep 2021
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Plant roots they say
Build a home and get comfortable
Stop and create a life
But my roots are planted in you
Your soul is my home
And the place I am most comfortable
Life is to be created along side you
95 · Sep 2021
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They will ask "how far can you imagine?"
But really it should be "how far can you see?"
because I see it all
You and I just existing
Claiming this life to be ours
92 · Sep 2021
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When I try to find the words
my mouth turns to rust
Stuck without proper words
I wish you were here
88 · Sep 2021
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Made out to be the sinner
Blinded by empathy
Mix in guilt and shame
Voila!
The villain is here
88 · Sep 2021
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Quiet chaos
You and me
Trying to find rhythm
Feels like desperation
Losing hope
I just need a sign
86 · Sep 2021
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It's the language I miss
The pocket of earth we created
Where jokes, rhymes, phrases
mean something to only us
I miss filling this room with laughter
Creating creases in our sheets
Bellies full
Hearts empty from
spreading outselves
out for one another
86 · Sep 2021
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They carry no fear of it
No impulse to pull you back in
They just loosen your grip
Slowly undoing your fingers
Each time you quickly replace one
A constant battle to hold on
Never let go of the cliff
Stay on the mountain and breathe it in
86 · Sep 2021
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Some days I feel like art
As if the universe picked
all the right pieces for
all the correct places
but some days, many days
I feel like a forgotten medium
Insecurity is never fun
It hurts to recognize the
things you will never be
to question our worth
to second guess out bodies
84 · Sep 2021
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the human frame tricks us
ever changing
constantly something better
magnify our flaws
compare again
constantly taking words to heart
replaying their view over and over
compare
82 · Sep 2021
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It was a chain of events
promises
desires
plans
Then nothing
Cast to the side as if it were
nothing
78 · Sep 2021
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it's unrealistic to think you
should be happy all the time
life doesn't always work that way
I'm just searching for the peace
being content
I've found pieces of it in many things
I found so much of it in you
"Please wait just let me speak"
I'll always hold onto you
just keep holding onto me
74 · Sep 2021
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I built a home in you
Furniture made of secrets
moments and memories
Spent within that home
Made of our love
73 · Sep 2021
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It's a constant shiver
As if I recognize I need to take a breath
Forget to breathe and remind myself
It causes a shake in my bones
We get here from me
we devolved because of me
How do I fix it?
How do I make it okay?
71 · Sep 2021
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For me?
You live in thousands of words
Countless dreams
Deep rooted love
I can be hope when you’ve run dry
I won’t give up on you
So please don’t give up on me
You’re going to get where you need to be
All those desires formed into
Perfect hopes and dreams
Every soul counted, saved
When it all feels far away I’ll try
My absolute best to keep you grounded
66 · Sep 2021
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I showed you my wounds
Delicately you sewed them up
Darkness sets and slowly
The thread is undone
Unravels by your hand
Unravels by their hands
65 · Sep 2021
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And so suddenly I don't exist
As if all those moments never happened
only for you
I'll carry them around
Life a weight fighting to drown me
The face you held in your hands
Struggling to stay above water
Trying to catch one more gasp of fresh air
Begging for some semblance of hope
The deepest of blue begging for a hand
Begging for a glimpse of what should be
61 · Oct 2021
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Each ***** packs a bag
“Get up and walk away?”
“Just overnight, maybe two
Because we seemingly cannot
Exist without you”
60 · Sep 2021
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I could try to explain it until I’m blue in face and yet you won’t know until you know. Grief is never something you just grow out of, you adapt, change, move yourself in circles around it. It comes with you, often times watching from afar. Suddenly it’s on your shoulder, whispering in your ear about all the mistakes you made when they were here, all the things you’ll never get to show them, moments you’ll never share. You can grieve until your eyes burn and your ears bleed… you’ll still never get rid of it.
60 · Nov 2020
12.
dust Nov 2020
12.
Tell me once more how it’s all suppose to be.
Fix yourself up.
Leave me standing around.
Question my motives
& deny my words.
59 · Oct 2020
Grief
dust Oct 2020
I feel like grief has been crippling me lately. Missing my mother has really been tearing me down. Her story is massive and yet I feel like I could relive it in my mind in five minutes, I think it just means I wanted more time with her. That feeling in itself is selfish because I certainly wasn’t deserving of making any demands of her, like sticking around longer. My mother was not perfect by any means, but I know that 98% of everything she did in her life was with the intention of helping others. I have heard the story over and over again for my entire life about the time we were robbed when I was a baby. Apparently the guys thought nobody was home when they broke in. My mom was upstairs with her three kids, myself and my two sisters, when she heard these guys enter the house. It was always told to me with the tone that my mom was completely petrified. Yet in that moment she held her own, barricading all of us in the room. She shoved furniture against the door of one of the bedrooms and we hid. I was so tiny my sister had to hold my mouth closed so I wouldn’t cry. Once when I was only a few years old I swallowed a tiny ball that was attached to a doll and almost died. My mom and her friend had to save me, called an ambulance, and each time I was told the story it always ended with “I was so afraid you would die... by a ******* ball”. She once got stabbed in the upper chest while working as a cashier at one of those all night corner grocery stores. The manager tried to ask how long it would be at the hospital and whether or not my mom would be back to finish shift, she swiftly told him to *******. She was so many things but mostly she never let life silence her. Criminal? Often. But more often than that she was the first person to go without to ensure someone else had. She was warm to so many others, rarely to her own children. The first time my heart experienced being broken, she simply told me it would happen again so don’t waste too much time dwelling on this one or that one. I was fortunate that I never experienced her in the throes of addiction when I was young, my older siblings watched her nearly **** herself when they were young. I believe it left me blinded to the signs when she put herself there again in my adult life. I had her back for a long time, fighting my siblings on the validity of what they were accusing her of but eventually I came to see what was going on. My mom would make me her version of shepherd's pie for my birthday every single year, no excuses, no missing it, she always made it. So per usual I showed up at her house on my birthday and the house wasn’t playing Fleetwood Mac, there was no food being prepped. It was quiet and sad. She was up in her room, locked away. I tried for over an hour to get her to open the door. I could smell the cigarettes, I could smell the incense, she was speaking to me so I knew she was in there and finally I gave up and left. My mom never made me shepherds pie again after that. She was in it, deep in the need to fill the voids that prescriptions were leaving. But I still followed her, one move from Champlin, Minneapolis, to Fridley. She was facing serious charges and prison time, a story for another day. We all thought she was accepting the set outcome. Suddenly she was just gone, packed up my little brother and drove to Indiana. I don’t know if she really thought they would just forget about her or if she was just riding with the fact that prison would mean detox. Drugs bring insanity. After she left I made the hard decision that her choices would mean that her relationship with myself was damaged, something almost beyond repair. So I kept my daughter from her, even eventually my son when he came along. The police did in face catch up with her, arrested her, transferred her back to Minnesota to complete her prison term. In all of that time I had temporary guardianship of my little brother, I had my son, I lost any real contact with my mother. We kept the required contact so that she could have a relationship with my little brother but that was where it stopped for her and I. In many ways prison was a good thing for her. She got sober, she did all the cliche classes and it felt like she was making progress as a human. Eventually she got out, so many steps later she found a place. Now the thing prison did not do well for her was her physical health. My mom lived with severe arthritis for all of her adult life, diagnosed and medicated from her early twenties, pins in her toes, knee replacement, elbow surgeries, etc. It was this way for as far back as I can remember. The prison system is not equipped to take care of someone who is that physically sick all the time, it’s just a fact. Couple these issues with long term drug use and lack of care, she came out worse off. So as great as she was doing mentally, she was quickly prescribed pain medicine again. So everyone tries, be present, check in, watch her medicine intake, help as much as humanly possible with everything you can. Now this is where guilt comes in. I forgave her for so many things, all the bad that she welcomed into her life and mine, I forgave her. Long before she died I had accepted everything that ever happened and forgave her. But I still didn’t open up my family to her, I deprived her of knowing my kids. I ask myself constantly if I would have done it differently if I knew she would be dying so soon and I can’t say I would have. So comes the guilt. I saved my children from watching my mother slowly **** herself, but I have moments where I am angry that she deprived them of having a healthy and happy Grandma. So more guilt. Guilt for not fixing it all, guilt for not being able to make her the best version of herself, guilt for being at work when she called me 5 hours before she died, guilt for not calling her back when I got off, guilt for cutting her off for those years. My mom was a pillar in my family, she was my one and only gateway to them. With the exception of the few years that she was gone and even with all the issues, my mom was my one and only person who kept me grounded and connected to my family. She didn’t allow me to remove myself from them. Now she’s gone and with her she took my connection to them and she left behind this constant fog. She gave me so many pieces of myself, some of them I have embraced and some I had to remove. The pain of her absence is something that cannot be expressed with words, it cannot be measured or taken away. It’s hard to explain the feeling when you lose the person who loves you, no matter what. Without question she loved me and knew me below the surface level, knew how unhappy I was, told me to fix my unhappiness because I was smart, beautiful... worthy of happiness and the next evening she left this place. Now something is always missing, something is always off, sadness is always a wolf chomping at my bones. Guilt and grief consume me, even when I try so hard to feel something. The things left on this planet that I still love feel so out of reach that I get lost and I just know that she would tell me something crazy, but it would work. Maybe it will never make sense but honestly I don’t know if that matters anymore.
57 · May 2020
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500 days of loving every single piece of you.

500 days of constantly feeling like I miss you.

500 days of desire and heartache.

500 days of not regretting it for one second.

500 days of not wanting to let go of it.

500 days of maintaining.

500 beautiful days of you.
57 · Nov 2020
14.
dust Nov 2020
14.
I forget about a lot.
I give permission to my mind to let it go.
“Don’t take it so personal.”
Remind myself it’s not always meant for me.
Yet I often replay moments, words, on repeat.
“You’re not worth my words.”
There is no deliverance from those.
56 · Nov 2020
13.
dust Nov 2020
13.
One day you’ll be forgotten.
Rooms will be bereft of light
& colors will become stark.
All because you won’t forget him.
He will take all those things with him
& no matter how beautiful the words
are, you can’t change his perception.
55 · May 2020
1.
dust May 2020
1.
I’ve watched the strong grow into their power.

I’ve been graced with their beauty.

I’ve been fortunate to love them above myself.

Buried by the desire to exist within their mind.

Always repeating how I love you more than me.
53 · Nov 2020
Mountain
dust Nov 2020
It’s a constant drum.
Right behind the sternum,
Well maybe a little too my left.

Have you ever tried to explain your hurt?
It’s like you’re climbing a mountain,
He is a mountain.
52 · May 2020
4.
dust May 2020
4.
You wish you were home

floating in the sea

shaded by the most beautiful trees

perfect sunsets would

set your soul free
52 · Nov 2020
7.
dust Nov 2020
7.
You make me dream in gold.
Clouds filled with milk.
Architecture made of honey.
My mind plays tricks on me
and makes me think you're here.
For a brief moment I exist
in a place made for you and I.
51 · Sep 2021
Untitled
dust Sep 2021
Set the table and wait.
Dimmed lights,
Waiting for the raw umber
To walk through the door.
48 · Nov 2020
15.
dust Nov 2020
15.
Some of us try to ignore the cruelty
out of love or simple desire.
We think about the surface when it happens.
The way in which it’s all a piece,
skin movement, the face made when they
think no one else is looking.
The weathered and sad existence,
deserving of love.
48 · May 2020
Today
dust May 2020
I seek shelter in your shade.
Offering genuflect until the end of days.
47 · Sep 2021
32921
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It’s the shake in your fingers
The irregular heartbeat
Gutted onto the floor boards
Listening to the creaks of them
As your roommate walks around
Never ending head spin as you
Try to force some sense into it all
Clip and compare moments
Complete
47 · Nov 2020
10.
dust Nov 2020
10.
After you swiftly remove my
heart from my chest,
I’ll leave it on my lap.
Bare for the wolves to consume.
Barren and without a care.
You can dispose of the pieces
they leave behind.
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