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Zywa Jul 16
I do need to talk

about my grief, he thinks that --


this would be unwise.
Autobiography "In den vreemde - Kronieken" ("In foreign parts - Chronicles", 2024, Frida Vogels), chapter 'De dood van moeder' (Mother's death) - There is a deep chasm between Frida and Ennio, and yet they get married nine months later - Rome, 1957

Collection "Trench Walking"
Joshua Phelps Jul 16
woke up  
on tuesday morning,  

one foot  
in front of the other.  

no rush,  
no hurry—  

just me,  
blue and under  
the weather.  

i used to find  
sunshine  
in so many places,  

but i lost  
the best  
i’ve ever had—  

and now,  
the sun feels  
a little colder
now.

i wonder  
whether  
it gets better.  

i used to be  
a goal-getter.  
now i’m in overdrive,  

short-term PTSD—  
nerves wrecked,  
spirit stretched.  

so many days  
crying,  
wondering if  
this ever ends—  

’cause i’m tired  
of living  
a bittersweet story,  

and tired  
of being  
down bad.  

you were  
the best—  

the best  
i’ve ever had.
There are mornings where the sunlight doesn’t hit quite the same—when grief lingers in the corners of routine, and you realize you're no longer who you used to be.

Inspired by All Time Low’s "The Weather", this piece reflects the quiet unraveling after losing someone who felt like your sun.
Nosy Jul 15
My thoughts never
get tired of me
They feel the winter
While I live the summer

I never get to have a chance
A certainty meant to last
A love undone of the past
Four wheels on pavement so fast

Not to be stopped or taken
Just to be lived and laughed
Sophia Jul 15
I woke up early that day
but once I peeled open my eyes
realisation clouded them
as reality blinded me,

I fell asleep that day
despiration pulling me away
from the atrocities of the waking world
as I lay in bed crying and wailing,

A bit of me died with you that day
as my heart did fall apart
solemn and invisible
but I still feel you now
and know you never left
because I woke up early that day
to spend more time with you.
Kalliope Jul 15
When did your ventricles stop pushing me through?

And why can’t your atriums hold me now too?

No more are the days my presence rests in your veins,

Your arteries don’t even remember my name.

No trace of me in capillary lines,

Their refill’s normal- your pulse
perfectly fine.

A love so strong it once gave you life,

But it seems you’ve bled me out to survive.
Whether you're sepsis or oxygen-
I don't know,
But i can't get you out of my system
Isabella Ford Jul 15
Your love came with a mirror —
always turned toward you.
Every ache I carried
became your stage,
each tear a script you rewrote
until my grief wore your name.

You call me selfish for bleeding in silence,
cold for curling into myself
when the world splits open inside my ribs.
But you never learned the language of my wounds,
only the echo of your own hunger.

I taught my voice to disappear at the sound of your temper,
hid my heart deep in the hollows of my chest
so it would not become your target.
I bowed to your shifting weather,
set my boundaries aflame
just to keep your thunder from splitting me open.

You call this love —
but real love fills, it doesn’t empty.
It holds me close without erasing me,
lets me stand beside you without fading to shadow.

I am learning the sharpness of my own outline,
the sacred violence of choosing myself.
I am learning to hold my pulse in my own palms,
to stitch my heart back together without apology.

One day, you will call me heartless.
You will say I turned cold,
that I stopped trying.

But I did not stop.
I started —
to breathe,
to rise,
to exist beyond the echo of your need.

I gathered the shards of the woman I was,
the one who bent and bled and begged to be seen.
I learned to kiss my own scars,
to trace each fracture as a map back home.

From the ashes of your endless guilting demands,
I built a quiet garden,
where my laughter echoes without fear,
where no one questions its tone or rewrites my words.
My body is no longer a battlefield,
but a soft terrain, now free to be touched with reverence, not claimed in conquest.

I found the wild in my veins again —
the witch who once danced beneath the stars,
who sang secrets to the moon with salt on her lips,
who carried entire storms inside her ribcage
and called them her magic.

I am not heartless.
I am not cold.
I am a woman remade in flame,
wearing the smoke as a crown,
singing to the morning as my own name takes root.

I am the bloom after the burning,
the breath after the breaking,
the softness that survives the blade.

Watch me —
unfurl into everything you never dared to say I couldn’t be,
radiant and ruthless in my becoming.
Unapologetic. Untamed. Unstoppable.
Melody Wang Jul 15
In a few months, I would become a mother
myself. Drove to her home, eager to spend
the day with my own mother. Tried to ignore
the deepening crevices in her face, arthritic

knuckles that still pounded dough to make
dumplings for others. Late afternoon, we perched
upon her kitchen stools, sipped chrysanthemum tea.
Her voice was quiet as she recalled leaving her dear mother

decades ago, toddler on hip, for a new life overseas. An unspoken goodbye that shimmered like silk between them. Sorrow distorted her face, the words strangled in her throat: Lao Lao, your grandma, had shuffled from room to room, stunned into silence, the roar of this impending

distance already drowning out my pleas for her to somehow understand. I was leaving her, perhaps forever. Her fingers had trembled as she gifted me a parcel containing two homemade qipao dresses and three tiny outfits for you –
a toddler who would grow up without ever knowing her grandma.

I watched my mom as she sat in her kitchen, shoulders slumped.
I could see how this loss broke something in her.  Still, I made
no move to embrace her. Apathy bloomed in my folded arms
and shifty eyes, a feeble attempt to shield myself

from her palpable pain. Didn’t realize that I would be steeped in it
a mere few months later. Didn’t quite know then how to measure the distance between these wounded souls spinning out, unsure
of which direction was ‘home’ and unable to turn back.

In this tale of three mothers, I now see the steadfast thread
of Your handiwork stitching together burdened hearts
spanning seas, lands, the spaces between. It was Your grace
that carried us — and only with You, did we each learn surrender.
Melody Wang Jul 15
In a vivid dream I beheld (held) you, as I had for weeks.
Your solemn eyes peered at me, perpetually seeking
answers that elude me still. No goodbyes were uttered,
or perhaps they drowned in the fair company of regret

One year prior, a false fatherly figure had towered over me
gleefully binding me with honeyed words and a dark
fortuneteller's bemused smile, haughty in his prophecy
that the little bump below my palm meant nothing, really

The light in my eyes is already fading; even now
I tread lightly, shrinking from cold condemnation
seeking out half-truths in the cavity left behind
by you, quiet fawn, unable to witness the morning dew
Melody Wang Jul 15
I waited alone in the sterile room
for the surgery, too stunned to even

consider the word ‘goodbye’. Instead, my legs
shivered against the stirrups, as I prayed

hard for a miracle, for a giant "aha!
Just kidding!" moment from the expanding

universe that would never be large
enough to hold space for you. Pity

I received from the ones closest to me,
words murmured to soothe. Yes, I was

grateful — still, in the cloying silence
that crept in months later, I realized:

I alone was left to somehow trudge through
the thick muck of this loss. They expected me

to swim and rise above, and I did, all the while
hoping the currents would pull me under. How

could anyone else truly know what it's like
when your very own body becomes a thief

who turns         hateful           against you,
prolific cells with cold fury driving your demise

to ****** up the very thing
you wanted more than life itself?
Thanu Jul 14
I painted his nails hot pink,
called it a joke,
but we both held on
too long.

He hummed my favorite song,
two notes behind,
like catching up
was close enough.

He carried me upstairs once —
said I was light.
I believed him.

The polish chipped.
We didn’t.

Now,
he’s a voice
I scroll past,

and somewhere,
a pair of chipped pink nails
he never scrubbed off
it was OPI polish, long lasting, but somehow didnt last enough.
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