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Lostling May 13
I’ve faded into the background.

But it was done so slowly, like salt dissolving in water,
That don’t notice my silent ghost.

I wonder if they think about the sunny person I used to be.

The weird rowdy kid who hung out with both the boys and the girls

The one who eagerly answered questions in class,
So much so that the teacher had to ban them from answering

The confident one who could lead
Without self doubt drowning them

Sometimes I wonder
If they think of me at all
I suppose I only have myself to blame
You're growing tired of me.
I can feel it in the spaces where your silence has started to settle.
I feel it in every breath you don't take around me anymore,
I feel it with how every laugh feels further away than it used to.
You don’t say it outright, but I see it in the way your eyes move past mine,
like I'm something you’ve already looked at too long
and you’re just trying to be polite.


I loved you so hard I still can’t sleep.
My mind keeps pulling your name apart and folding it back into maybes and ifs,
and I replay it all, the quiet moments, the almosts, everything
until I start to think they mean more than they should.
You should know I never stopped loving you, not even for a second.
But I don’t think you’ve figured that out
or maybe you have,
and you’ve just stopped loving me.
The thought of that sits heavy in my stomach, like a second heartbeat.
Some nights I start thinking up versions of myself that might’ve been easier to love
ones who don’t wear their sadness so visibly and so meanly,
ones who wouldn’t make you feel like staying is a chore.


You're growing tired
of all the things I won’t say out loud,
the feelings I edit out of every sentence
because I’m scared of tipping the balance
between “close friend” and “too much.”
So I swallow the aches before they rise,
tie my thoughts into neat little knots
so you don’t see how messy it really gets.
How messy I really am.


Sometimes I think about telling you everything
you are the only person who’s ever made me feel like I can, but I still can’t.
It’s all too tangled.
I want to know how it feels to sit beside you and want nothing
except to be held like I mean something
held like maybe I mean as much to you as you do to me.
Yet I stay quiet, again, like I always do,
because if I spill it…
won’t it drown you too?  


I miss our hugs, where in that moment our souls blurred together.
I miss our cuddles on the couch, where everything felt right, felt safe.
I miss how being near you made the hurting stop, even just for a little while.
But now it’s been so long.
All I have left is the ghost of your warmth,
And now, your touch feels too heavy,
like something I’m not sure I can carry,
cold in a way that makes everything feel distant.
like your warmth has faded into something unfamiliar.
It’s not that I don’t want you


I do.
But this isn’t you.
This is a poem about a slow growing emotional distance between bestfriends
Cadmus May 4
We danced in fire, we spoke in stars,
Our whispers rode on midnight cars.
Your laugh would bloom where silence grew,
And every dream began with you.

But now your words fall cold and thin,
Like echoes lost in rusted tin.
Your hand once burned to meet with mine
Now slips away, devoid of sign.

We used to kiss like time stood still,
Now even touch feels forced, uphill.
We shared a world, a sacred art
But this is a far cry from the start.

No storms, no fights, just quiet air,
And all the passion stripped to bare.
We smile on cue, we play the part
Yet love has slipped out from the heart.

So here we are, not near, not far
Two strangers orbiting one star.
And though you’re here, I fall apart
This love’s a far cry from the start.
This poem captures the quiet unraveling of a relationship, the slow drift from intimacy to emotional distance. It reflects how love can fade not through chaos, but through silence, routine, and absence of true connection
Faith Cubitt Apr 25
I really don't know what to call this....
but you'd glance my way and this feeling would wash over me
like you had set a cage of butterflies free inside me
your eyes made me beyond nervous
they were so deep, intoxicating
I wanted to drown in them and run away all at the same time
this does not make sense because you are you and I am me
a boy and a dreamer
you are like the ground, steady, stable, always there
you sleep at night and work in the day.... nothing about your vision is blurry
sleep and myself are enemies, dreams consume my day and night
my heads spinning and nothing makes sense
you my love are perfect well I'm a paradox
hold me close.... for another second just incase my illusions come true....
you are so beautiful in everything you say....
Build with trust alone,
Don't let worry take it's toll,
What you built will fade.
Haiku :)
I drift, a river restless, wide,
Carved by time, yet pulled inside.
Bound to banks that held me tight,
Yet drawn beyond their dwindling sight.

The wind hums secrets to my skin,
A song of loss, a song of kin.
The waves that call, the stars that guide,
Whisper change—yet fear resides.

I crash, I twist, I rise, I fall,
A roaring flood, a whispered call.
Melancholy pools in me,
But so does fire, wild and free.

The ocean waits with open hands,
Unmeasured depths, untrodden sands.
Am I dissolving? Am I whole?
Or just becoming something more—

A sky, a storm, a silver crest,
The river vast within my chest.
No longer lost, not yet complete,
I am the flow, I am the deep.
Jhamarie Mar 22
I chased the butterflies your actions spun
Only to learn they were a phase undone
My subtle words a love I longed to share
Met with a silence a feeling beyond repair

A single word and I'd have crossed the waves
And build a world that I long to dream
But deeper knowing brings a deeper fall
Your crave for silence to escape it all

I wished you knew this hope so frail and slight
Longed for your words to make it truly bright
To bury moments and release your hold
And if I asked, what story would be told?
I dedicate this poem to my long-unrequited love. I hope you know how I feel, and if I ask, please don't . . .
If the planet woke up,
And we had all disappeared,
Would it mourn our memory?

It depends on the way we go,
Somebody snapping their fingers, we fade away,
Or a blinding ball of light as nuclear weapons implode.

If God revoked our presence today,
What would happen with all the factories,
There's a chance they run until Earth runs out of fuel.

It seems that if that happened,
Then all these countries would sink into the sea,
With our glory and memory.
The prompt was,
Would Earth be better off if we all went extinct.
Maryann I Mar 19
I loved you like spring loves the thaw,
like lungs crave air,
like art bleeds from the soul of the artist.
And I thought love was enough
to keep the thorns from drawing blood.
I thought devotion would bloom into safety—
but I was only watering a graveyard.

The sickness started slow.
First, a cough—
a whisper of rose dust on my tongue.
Then came the petals,
delicate at first,
pink and trembling with hope.
I cradled them like confessions,
believed they were proof of love.

But they kept coming—
petal after petal,
each one heavy with what you wouldn’t give back.
You kissed me with a smile,
while my lungs filled with flowers
planted by hands that never loved me,
only held me for convenience,
for control,
for conquest.

You were a storm beneath soft skin,
a poison wrapped in perfume.
And I loved you—
God, I loved you,
even while you killed parts of me
with your indifference,
even before I knew the rot ran deeper
than abandonment.

Now I know.
Now I know what you are.
A ****** draped in sunlight,
a predator with a paintbrush smile.
You painted me pretty,
then picked me apart.
And I mistook the pain for passion,
your silence for mystery,
your selfishness for sadness.

My body remembers every time
you touched without love,
every moment I mistook trauma for intimacy.
The petals grew darker—
maroon now,
coated in blood,
choking me from within.

I coughed them into my hands,
and still whispered your name
as if you’d come back with kindness,
as if you were ever kind.

I don’t want to mourn you.
I want to mourn me—
the version of me who still believed in you,
who still thought love was supposed to hurt
but not like this.
Never like this.

Hanahaki, they call it—
the disease of unreturned love.
But this isn’t love anymore.
This is grief.
This is rage.
This is survival.

And someday,
someday I’ll breathe again,
clear-chested, flowerless,
free.
This is an older poem written during a difficult time in my life. I’ve since found healing and am now in a healthy, loving relationship. It took time to recover, but things are getting better, and I’m learning to grow from the pain.
Sharon Talbot Mar 17
I was thinking about the blast
of neon colors in a film
and the New Wave Music
and Marie Antoinete pastels

But in my childhood
it was as if we had other hues,
a small box of crayons at hand,
or that the world was seen through
Kodachrome film.

There were lollipop reds and purple
and dungaree blues, lake and skies,
lemon ice yellows, setting suns
and lush summer green.

In scratched lenses, children seemed to play
as if inspired by the living colors,
imagining that their lives would last forever.
And even as they grow, it immortalizes them.

But, like life, the colors decay
and we gaze at scenes of sepia and moss,
with ochre grass and reds turned brown.
We must attune memory to remember more.

And using suspension of disbelief,
Elders, middle-aged and children gather
Like the neolithic ceremonies meant for gods,
But celebrate, not the stars or stones,
Rather the lives we have lived or have yet to taste.
I found the first two stanzas written on an old paper in my journal and decided to finish it.
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