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Eme Apr 15
Ponder this…
We were never born of sin.

We were born in God’s image.

And God is not broken.
He is perfect.

He is love.

He is good.

He is whole.
So we were born whole.
Sin is real…
But it is not our origin.

It is not our identity.

It’s a distortion, a distraction—
A veil over the truth.
And the truth is…
You were never broken.

You were always loved.
You are still whole.
Remember who you are.

Remember that inner voice calling you back.

Heal this generation.

Rewire our children to know:
 We are not born of sin.

We are born of wholeness.
And if we remember…
Our children’s children can know generational peace.
Chapter I: Disappear Politely

There was a town with one stoplight
and two churches that hated each other.
The first church tolled its bell louder.
The second buried its girls quieter.

It was the kind of place where grief
was passed down like heirloom silver:
polished, inherited, never touched—
except to prove they had it.

Where the girls learned early
how to disappear with grace.

They say the first one—Marlena—
just walked into the lake,
mouth full of wedding vows
no one had asked her to write,
and her prom dress still zipped.

The older preacher saw her go under—
didn’t move,
just turned the page in his sermon book.
Said later:
Girls like that always need a stage.

The parents told their daughters
not to cause trouble.
Told them to smile more,
leak less,
bloom quietly,
be good—
or
be gone.

Then cried when they vanished.
Then lit candles.
Then said things like
“God has a plan,”
to keep from imagining
what the plan required.

Chapter II: The Girls Who Spoke Wrong

A girl named Finch refused to sleep.
Said her dreams were trying to arrest her.
One morning they found her curled in the middle of Saint Street—
like a comma the sentence abandoned.

A knife in her boot,
daffodils blooming from her belt loops—
like she dressed for both war and funeral.

Finch was buried upright.
Because God forbid
a girl ever be horizontal
without permission.


The sheriff was mailed her journals
with no return address.
He read one page.
Paused.
Coughed once, like the truth had teeth.
Lit a match.

Said it wasn’t evidence—
said it was dangerous
for a girl to write things
no one asked her to say.

No one spoke at her funeral,
but every girl showed up
with one eye painted black
and the other wide open.

Not make-up.
Not bruise.
Just warning.

Chapter III: Half-Gone Girls & Other Ghosts

And then there was Kiernan.
Not missing. Not dead.
Just quieter than the story required.

She stuffed cotton in her ears at church—
said the hymns gave her splinters.
Talked to the mirror like it owed her something—
maybe a mouth,
maybe mercy.

She was the one who found Finch’s daffodils first.
Picked one. Pressed it in her journal.
It left a bruise that smelled like vinegar.

No one noticed
when she stopped raising her hand in class.
Her poems shrank to whispers,
signed with initials—
like she knew full names
made better gravestones.

Someone checked out Kiernan’s old library book last week.
All the margins were full of names.
None of them hers.
They say she’s still here.
Just not all the way.

A girl named Sunday
stopped speaking at eleven,
and was last seen barefoot
on the second church roof,
humming a song no one taught her.

Sunday didn’t leave a note.
She figured we’d write one for her anyway.
Some girls disappear all at once.
Others just run out of language.

Clementine left love letters in lockers
signed with other girls’ names.
Said she was trying to ‘redistribute the damage.’
She stood in for a girl during detention.
Another time, for a funeral.

Once, Clementine blew out candles
on a cake that wasn’t hers.
Said the girl didn’t want to age that year.
Said she’d hold the wish for her—
just in case.

She disappeared on picture day,
but her face showed up
in three other portraits—
blurry,
but unmistakable.

The town still isn’t sure who she was.
But the girls remember:
she took their worst days
and wore them like a uniform.

Chapter IV: Standing Room Only

They say
the town
got sick
of digging.

Said
it took
too much
space
to bury
the girls
properly.

So
they
stopped.

Started
placing
them
upright
i­n the
dirt,

palms
pressed
together,

like
they
were
praying
for
re­venge.
Or maybe
just
patience.

The lake only takes
what’s already broken.
It’s polite like that.
It waits.

They renamed it Mirrorlake—
but no one looks in.

The daffodils grow back faster
when girls go missing—
brighter, almost smug,
petals too yellow
to mean joy anymore.

No one picks them.
No one dares.

The earth hums lullabies
in girls’ names,
soft as bone dust,
steady as sleep.

There’s never been enough room
for a girl to rest here—
just enough to pose her pretty.

They renamed the cemetery “Resthill,”
but every girl calls it
The Standing Room.

Chapter V: When the Dirt Starts Speaking

Someone said they saw Clementine
in the mirror at the gas station—
wearing someone else’s smile
and mouthing:
“wrong year.”

The school yearbook stopped printing senior quotes.
Too many girls used them wrong.
Too many girls turned them into prophecies.
Too many girls were never seniors.

They didn’t bury them standing up to honor them.
They just didn’t want to kneel.

The stoplight has started skipping green,
like the town doesn’t believe in Go anymore.
Just flickers yellow,
then red,
then red again.

A warning no one heeds.
A rhythm only the girls who are left
seem to follow.

Some nights,
the air smells like perfume
that doesn’t belong to anyone.

And the church bells ring without being touched.
Only once.
Always just once.
At 3:03 a.m.

Now no one says the word ‘daughter’
without spitting.
No one swims in the lake.

The pews sigh
when the mothers sit down.
Both preachers said:
“Trust God.
Some girls just love the dark.”

But some nights—
when the ground hums low
and the stoplight flickers
yellowyellowred—

you can hear a knocking under your feet,
steady as a metronome.

The ground is tired of being quiet.
The roots have run out of room.

The girls are knocking louder—
not begging.
Not asking.

Just letting us know:
they remember.

*And—
This piece is a myth, a ghost town, and a warning.
A holy elegy for girls who vanish too politely, and a reckoning for the places that let them.
A picket-line/
crossed-can/
leave-a-little/
man-lost/
despite-being/
just-a-boy/
when-the-strikes/
took-place./
Boundaries/
embossed/
leave/
dumbstruck/
picketed-rods/
strewn-across/
backs-of-polloi./
Uncled-pike./
Coked-hate./
The-coaly/
burrows/
are-filled/
and-gone/
from-sight/
but-the-feuds/
still-carve/
deep-shafts/
in-hearts/
and-min
ds/es./
Generations/
are-instilled/
with-wounds/
black-bright./
Scabby-crude./
That-dig/
and-craft-into/

an, asphyxiated, dead, canary,
at, the, very, bottom.

Of-a-pigeonholed/
unmoving-min
e/d./

© poormansdreams
This piece is inspired by an encounter I had the other day and I just had to write about it. It amazes me how generational grudges can be kept and stereotypes reinforced. Also, mildly, terrifying.
Alyssa Jan 16
A thick thread
of never-ending
cruelness,
its toxicity running
so deep
it contaminates
anyone
it can wrap itself
around
until I discovered
how to cut
myself
loose.






Copyright © 2025 Alyssa Rondeau
All Rights Reserved
Breaking the cycles
I wish you’d rise above it all
And be the person I thought I saw.
The loving parent I dreamed you’d be,
Cherishing your kids unconditionally.
But once again, I see the truth—
That dream was never meant for you.

You taught us right from wrong, it’s true,
But failed to practice what you knew.
Believing yourself better than the rest,
Yet you’re no top-notch, high-class success.
Not even the middle ground you aspired to be,
But the dollar store version of what a parent shouldn’t be.

Your children are shattered, broken, and torn,
But instead of reflection, you point and scorn.
Blaming others, yet blind to this fact:
Every hand shaped the pain we’ve packed.
One told us love wasn’t ours to claim,
That our worth was tied to our weight and shame.
Another sought love and found none to give,
While one taught us grace in how to live.
The rest hid away, their courage sold,
Leaving us with lessons both cruel and cold.

But you, you’re the real masterstroke—
You taught us to carry everyone’s yoke.
To put ourselves last, to give and give,
Till there’s nothing left in us to live.
Now we’re all broken in different ways—
One’s near the grave, another astray,
And the last just fights to make it through the day.

They cry softly at night, their breath so thin,
You wouldn’t notice—it doesn’t fit in.
All they’ve ever wanted was to make you proud,
To feel seen, even once, above the crowd.
But your plans for them twist and betray,
Stealing their hope and their dreams away.

You rob them of money, of land, of peace,
All for a façade that will never cease.
Chasing a life to save face at work,
Pretending you’re more than a person who shirks.
But the truth is plain for all to see—
You’ve failed them, and you’ve failed me.
Lumin Guerrero Dec 2024
I am heavy
with hurt.
Both mines, and yours

And the hurt of
My mother,
a woman who deserves commited love.
And my father,
a boy who shouldn't have starved.
And my grandmothers,
girls that grew up too fast and too far away from home.

And the for all the children of the world,
all of us whose ability to love others and ourselves in a silly, gentle, erratic, genuine, inperfect, beautiful way was lost with boxed up toys and discarded sugary cereal boxes.

And for the world,
a once beautiful place that has been forced to endure careless brutality and abuse that is now scarred and broken and yet is still fighting for itself.

Like all the children of the world
Like my grandmothers
Like my father
Like my mother
Like you
Like me.

It's a heavy load to carry,
But I'm not planning to give in any time soon.
I THOUGHT I LOST THS POEM BUT THEN I  FIND IT IN MY DRAFTS! YIPPEE!!!
AWURAA Nov 2024
Because I am my father's child, forgive me whilst I observe your character without allowing myself to fall for you pretences.

Because I am my father's child, ignore me as I ignore you watching me, you thinking that I cannot see you watching me.

Because I am my father's child, hold me back when I replay my past hurts in my tone.

Because I am my father's child, observe me as my doe-like eyes observe the beauties of The Father's world for me.

Because I am my father's child please pull me out of my tornado of self doubt and self hatred when you see a cloud of darkness over me.

Because I am my father's child, do not bother me when my face seems distorted with confusion, I am only dissolving into my thoughts.

Because I am my father's child, ignore the voice you hear when I think I am alone, at times it is the richness in my own tone that I  wish to hear the most.

Because I am my father's child, do not be fazed by the guttural sounds of my prayers, it shakes the ground because whatever I bind on earth is bound in heaven.

Because I am my father's child, please think before you spit words of despair into my face, he and I are still healing from how our father's treated us.
Reference to Matthew 18:18 in stanza 8 t NKJV is what I was going for.
Matthew Bright Oct 2024
My grandmothers are
standing there ,
mother , maiden , crone .
Wisdom , transformation
and they are guardians
of the doorway .

Black Crow waits patiently
outside .
New Moon in
Scorpio ,
the blank rune , Judgement ,
spirits of the earth and
material existence .

Destiny is power and using
Chaos ,
like the three fates ,
or cutting a thread ,
only realising it was always
this way .

My grandmothers are
standing there .
Sofia Sep 2024
Just like a flea I’ve been taught not to jump higher then the limit that was set for me,
That to live is to be realistic,
So as I get closer older,
I discard those dreams,
Allowing them to slip uselessly through my fingers.
And when I have kids,
The cycle will continue,
I will teach them how to live,
So that their heads won’t hit the top of the lid.
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