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the peasant girl
who once brought water
from the well
in cracked hands
has returned.
she didn’t mean to
leave her home behind —
it was just to escape
the silence between
what she needed
and would be never given.
she left with nothing
but a hunger for life,
so she started living,
and never apologised.
this one is about the girl who returned, but didn't belong anymore.
july 12, 2025.
a ring of embers—
with my heart
gently dancing around it.
my face is flushed,
damp with tears,
as if they’ve started
boiling in the mist.
I miss you—
but you know that
already.

in my mind,
I’m still running
through the churchyard,
over stone paths,
stepping on yellowed leaves
that gave up weeks ago.
inside me:
homesickness, awe,
anger, grief—
a hundred hands,
all pulling.

you’re a morsel of bread,
bird-snatched, half-left—
carried home in my satchel,
like a labourer
at the day’s end.
you are what you say you are.
and more.
a frame around my soul
I can’t keep building.

I cannot call you mine.
I have a homeland.
you gave the exile shelter—
but she, the other,
birthed me, shields me,
and one day
will cover me with earth.
I cannot betray her.

for what you made
and left behind,
I owe you still.
I’ll bury your legacy
like treasure
in the quietest parts.
it’s mine to guard.

and maybe one day,
when time has vanished,
I can return to you—
shed a tear for us
on a rainy evening,
wipe you clean
like an old photograph,
and place you gently
back into
a quiet corner
of the past.
July 10, 2025.
this one is about loyalty split in half. one gave me language, the other gave me life.
the space in my mind
is occupied by your entity,
merging with mine.
you pose as a false god,
painting me the enemy –
demanding a sacrifice
each time I resist
your quiet reign.

I enabled it.
let you have your fun.
called it inspiration,
called it love.
called it anything
but what it was.
of all my failures,
you were the most toxic one.

I gave you everything –
piece by piece.
you’d cover my mouth
to silence the plea
whenever I sought shelter,
with hands, trembling,
still tied to a bottle
you call the cure.

you smother what’s left of me –
dressed in ebriety,
hiding the abuse.

and I need to say goodbye.
not because I want to.
but because I’ve had enough.
of you hurting me,
of you driving me
to hurt myself.
you’re costing me everything,
and the loss is exorbitant.

I’m not just saying goodbye to you.
you’re exiled.
your velvet threats,
your sugar-coated grip –
banished.
it hurts me more
than you think.
but this time, it’s final.
because I’m not ready
to see the aftermath
if it isn’t.
this one is about the last fight.
july 7, 2025
I Should Have Followed You  

"Can I still call you Dorothea?"—even though the black and white lines in the paper reduce you to the habit you wore, arrange you into silence, a name and surname surrendered to the cloistering of lilies. Somewhere beyond this obituary, the grown children you once taught trace grief into their office desks, their minds recalling your half-remembered lessons. The others—those who once marched beside you—remember the compadre who chose devotion over struggle, who vanished into the ghost dust of old revolutionary dreams.  

Once, you were a believer who marched along Che and Fidel, a woman with a true north compass. You were never reckless, never a ghost in Havana’s dusk. You spent your nights writing, sealing letters to revolutionaries. You drank in hope like sugarcane.  

Then, the cause hardened. The slogans lost their breath. When Fidel called the people gusanos (worms) in a moment of drunkenness, you knew you must leave the revolution and Cuba behind. It was a certainty.  

You rooted yourself among the Miami exiles. We met on campus, arguing over a political opinion piece you wrote for the college newspaper. I argued that the Bay of Pigs operation was necessary. You wrote that it was a stupid exercise in democratic colonialism and was doomed to failure. And it was.  

Our love was a bickering affair. My adolescent jokes, mocking what I thought were your misplaced beliefs, chipped our foundation. I believed I was never lost. But I was orbiting a center I refused to name. After the revolution betrayed your faith, you retreated into a steady, quieter certainty—Jesus. He told you to press your palms into the smallest child’s hands. "Teach them lessons in your authentic voice," the command.  

I should have followed you. I could have stepped over the doubt that swelled between us, made a church of our mornings, sheltered in your certainty—if only you laughed more. If only I’d prayed less in jest.  

Now, my fig grows stubborn at my window, its roots strong, its love silent, and I, too, am nearing the end. I would light a candle, Dorothea—but what god still takes offerings from men like me? I will leave a hundred dollars in the box instead, fold your name into my palm, and call this devotion.
Vianne Lior Feb 20
Winged thing,
bruised blueprint,
longing inked into bone—
how does the sky taste
when you flee instead of follow?

I have seen you—
a breath stolen mid-exhale,
a contradiction unraveling,
a hymn hummed through clenched teeth.
you call it survival.
I call it the ache of knowing
you were never meant to land.

what is wisdom
but a body fluent in exile,
a home that never stays?

tell me—
when the air stills,
when silence sutures your shadow to the dirt,
will you miss the flight,
or
only the myth of almost arriving?

My mother’s name is lost
to everyone beyond her children.

“She was beautiful.
What was her name?”,
others would say to me  
when shown her image
hanging silently on the wall.

In the chanting of it—their wind
echoes my death back in a cloud
of disinterested kindness
and muttered miseries.
  
They know only their faces,  
the renamed mountains and rivers,
the new language of their exile.

Not that—
she was wind born—
knew her better name.
G N Kayacılar Oct 2024
Made a bruised heart wait out in the cold
Had it sag down
On your streets where there were no justice
Only merciless dogs trembling in their skin
For so violent an unbelonging
Such a vain act of expelling
Came from your seat, your house
Cold hearth
The ones you bore waiting waif
Out on your streets, in concrete embellish
the ones you could not take home
Orphaned and fooled
Ding ding ding
Hearing of the death bell ring
And honor dies bleeding
But not a love lost
Bekah Halle Jan 2024
There are parts of me I've hidden
from long, long ago —
There are parts I have treasured
and let the world know.
There are parts I have shunned
what I didn't want to show,
And there are parts I've enlarged,
magnified in my dreams - my ego!
Some have danced on the pages of journals,
some I have lived out, so —
Those that don't serve, I've  exiled
to antipathy's limbo.
Intellect will soldier on in the face
that only trauma knows —
But somehow, the playful one
charms and warms me aglow.
Remember, I urge,
there's more in me than I know!



Don't be frightened.
Bardo Jan 2024
Into this world we all come
Great Kings and Queens
Every last one

But pretty soon this world
It has reduced us to mere... scared beggars
Thieves, outlaws...robbers.
Ever felt like a criminal/ an outlaw in your life.
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