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  May 6 inthewater
Lizzie Bevis
Once, I loved with abandon,
like a river flowing wild and free,
with no walls,
no doubts,
no questions,
just with pure possibility.

Now love stalks like a savage beast,
and I am weary of it's teeth.
Trust bleeds through
my painful raw wounds
where hope and fear
fester beneath.

Each time I dare to offer
my beaten and weathered heart,
the past denies,
leaving me empty,
and I often wonder
if I will be enough.

Was the river never wanted
by those searching for mere rain?
My heart,
once soft,
now toughened,
guarding carefully against such pain.

©️Lizzie Bevis
inthewater Apr 9
i've watched you die one thousand times
in one hundred different ways

still, i can't decide which is worse
what my mind creates at night,
or, what we found that day

this reoccurring theme of mine,
all that i've catastrophized,
comes out at night to play

sometimes, my mind
makes me watch you die -

a masochistic gift for me

sometimes, it's that i know you'll die
and i can't warn of what i see

once i dreamt you faked your death
to prove our lack of care
you didn't even tell your best friend, Steve
he was just as confused and unaware
"i knew it! you guys don't love me"
you screamed, as i stood there

my mind still fights the guilt i have
but it rears its ugly head

i woke up on my 25th birthday
crying, from the torments of my bed

the dreams that make me pause the most
are where you live
but you're not you

you're angry, and hurt, and you're like a child
and you won't calm down to speak to me
and i don't know what to do

but i know why i have that dream
it's my soul's decline of guilt

because if that's what we saved you for
our lives couldn't have been rebuilt

my mind wanders to that night
staring down the stairs

it's my mind and it pleads with me:
it's better we weren't there
some of the dreams i've had since my dad's death in 2021
  Mar 20 inthewater
Kiernan Norman
I knew you were there —
knuckles resting like they didn’t know what to do.
I heard your breath through the wood.

You almost knocked. I felt it —
the air pulling back,
the hush flexing its muscles.

I almost opened the door. I felt that too —
the lock daring me to turn it,
the weight of the air leaning hard against my chest.

But neither of us moved.

We just stood there —
two statues pretending not to be waiting —
except I heard you breathing.
And I know you heard me too.
inthewater Mar 20
if you love me
- despite - the things that make me ugly
you don't really love me...
but you're doing me a favor
and i'll never be able to thank you enough
\
if you love me
because, you say, that - i'm not ugly -
you don't really love me...
you're just pretending that i'm not ugly
and you'll never be able to see me enough.
or maybe one day you will,
and that will be too much
\
for you to really love me
you need to know the ways in which i'm ugly
and love me for those reasons too...
or at the very least, understand them
based on a line from one of my favorite songs, "It Didn't Fix Me" by Dawes.

"I finally found someone who loves me,
and to her I will be true.
She sees the ways in which i'm ugly,
and loves me for those reasons, too."

also contemplating the implications of how or why someone says they love someone, and how it is sometimes hard to accept when someone loves you, because you know all of your worst flaws
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