#memory poems on Hello Poetry

David Cornetta 3h

As neon pulses through a sleepless night,
The sidewalks bustle with wandering ghosts,
And vapor rises — a mist of pale steam
From streets that glint beneath an autumn rain.

I see a woman in a ruby coat;
Her shadow pools round her feet, like spilled ink,
As she tries to mouth a name through the haze —
A name unheard over the subway’s groan.

She’s gone before the streetlights flicker, but
Her shadow lingers a moment longer,
Stretching out beneath the gilded lamplight —
But was she ever even there at all?

No answer falls with the September rain,
No hint comes drifting on the pallid mist.
And still the train rumbles on unconcerned,
And I can’t recall why she had mattered.

The neon curdles within its veins,
While darkness swallows the ruby echo,
And I walk these streets among the phantoms,
To fade at last into the night once more.
©️2025 David Cornetta

#ruby #echo #fleeting #isolation #city #noir #memory #ghost #night #neon

Henry Fry 5h

Artistic Deterioration

The brittle oak legs hold up my taut canvas
They have endured years of feelings without buckling
And here they stand, facing me, asking me
When will you stop?

The splintered paintbrush drips colour on the soil beneath me Unwavering in the palm of my hand, it stays steady, solid
Yet it groans under the pressure of my fingers
Crying out for mercy with every stroke.

The canvas calls, beckoning my delivery of mind and heart
It whispers calm claims of serenity and peaceful hours
Whilst these are compelling words
There's only one use it can give to me.

The paint dries in the southern sun, untouchable but delicate
A portrait so realistic, only her stillness betrayed her
She gazes at me with lapis coloured eyes that don't move
If only I could recall who she was.

The memory of her explodes in my mind like a carpet bomb
But it's stripped away just as soon, ripped from my fingers
A crystalline tear cascades as I pummel the bare sod with fury
But until I remember again,

The brittle oak legs shake violently under my taut canvas.
The bent paintbrush leaks paint onto the soil beneath me.
The canvas whispers, beckoning my delivery of tears and anger.
The paint drips in the moonlight, distorted and warped.

#memory #art #paint #dementia #love #anger

Salwa 17h

Wrote a letter to an old poet

I wrote a letter to an old poet.
The paper: stained,
the pen: dry.
Then “Time stopped,” as the poet would say,
and often I find myself convinced by the claim.

I stare at the parchment,
at a loss for what to write—
letters jumbled
into half-made sentences,
with words that have no provenance.

It was moonlight when I started.
Now it’s day, and I stare
out the window.
I realize now—it was love we shared.
But the poet I knew is long gone.
His voice: an echo in my mind.
His poems—nothing but a mere song of his thoughts.
Words
that then were just momentary.

I recall him sitting in this very place,
writing until his pen
spilled ink all over the desk.
My gaze lingers on the stains that remain—
even the table can’t forget his trace.

I try to find it in myself
to forget him,
to forgive him
for tangling me in his mess.
To dust off the remains of his presence.

I find myself staring at the parchment once more,
and for the first time, I realize he had cursed me—
leaving me with his poetry behind.
Now all I write is but a shadow of him,
his voice stuck in the back of my mind.
And perhaps that was the cruelest thing he had done:
leaving me to bleed on parchment,
to be a mere trace—to fade.

#poetry #loss #grief #memory #love #curse #betrayal #timedifference

Zywa 1d

[ Being alone is ]

Being alone is

nice, my experiences --

resonate again.

Song "Aftertones" (1976, Janis Ian, album "Aftertones")

Collection "Being my own museum"

#alone #recall #remember #memory

Bella 1d

It's Just Us

Two winters ago I would chain-smoke spirits on my way to work in the early mornings;
windows down, blueish fingertips,
driving through the gunks into the sunrise, Leonard Cohen on repeat—
            I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel
I would drive home much the same way, sometimes going the long way
to catch the sunset;
my sunless days, nestled between 4 stiff walls
The world was grey;
            grey pavement
            grey skies
            grey walls
            grey smoke
It must be this way forever, I thought.
that February was the coldest month I remember being alive—

This year the windows are up, the sun is bright, I keep my car
warm.
In the passenger seat;
a bag of sweet sesame rice crackers, an apple, lime seltzer, a little jacket, my journal, tiny socks—
I reach my hand in the backseat
when Winona cries,
let her wrap her tiny fingers
around my thumb, "I'm here,
sweet girl"
I pull into a park on
the river— we get out
            watch the trees
            sway, the breeze
paints our faces rose, we
orient ourselves in this
big, unfamiliar
world. she reaches her hand
out as if to grab the falling leaves, a
wonderous look on her soft face—
she smiles,
she touches my face,
just months old and she knows
            my voice
she knows
            my safety—
for a moment,
            nothing else exists,
            the world doesn't know
            we're here—
for a moment, it's just us,
            like it was in that hospital room
            not too long ago
for a moment, there is
            peace—

I wonder if I'll remember this
in 60 years,
when both our hands
will have wrinkled, mine more
than hers; when crows' feet
ordain our eyes;
when I've lived my life, and she's
well into hers. I know
she won't remember,
I hope I do—

#mothering #memory #time #change

Cadmus 20h

Alive !

You don’t notice it at first.
Not really.
Life keeps you busy with noise, with dreams, with the next thing.

But then one day,
you cross an invisible threshold.
There’s no signpost, no celebration
just the quiet erosion of what once mattered.

The body falters first.
Not dramatically - no, it’s more insidious than that.
You wake up sore from sleep.
You get winded climbing stairs you once ran.
You start measuring your days in energy, not hours.

Then come the dreams
the ones you clung to like anchors.
They begin to dissolve.
Some shrink into hobbies, others vanish with a sigh.
And the ones that remain?
Too fragile to chase, too old to birth.

Your beliefs shift too.
Not because they were wrong,
but because the world keeps insisting you make room for things
you once swore you’d never tolerate.

You adjust.
You settle.
You survive.

But the worst part
the part no one warns you about
is the people.

One by one,
they begin to leave.

Some give you time.
They let you prepare your goodbye.
Others vanish mid-conversation,
leaving cups half full and promises unfinished.

And what’s cruel is not just that they’re gone
it’s that nothing fills their space.
You try.
You pretend.
You build new connections like patchwork quilts.
But nothing fits quite right.

Because love, real love, isn’t replaced.
It’s carried
as ache,
as memory,
as absence you learn to walk around like a piece of furniture in the dark.

You keep going, of course.
What else can you do?
You make tea.
You water the plants.
You smile at strangers and nod at the sky like it still owes you something.

But deep down, you know:
This is what it means to age
not the wrinkles, not the gray.
It’s the slow, silent disappearing
of everything that once made you feel
alive.

Aging is not just the passage of time , it’s the quiet art of learning how to let go, again and again, without ever quite mastering it.

#aging #loss #memory #grief #change #solitude #reflection #goodbye #time #acceptance

Cadmus 1d

She Called Me His Name

I never forgave my twin brother
for abandoning me
for six minutes in our mother’s womb,
leaving me there alone,
terrified in the dark,
floating like an astronaut in that silent space,
while kisses rained down on him from the other side.

Those were the longest six minutes of my life
the minutes that made him the firstborn,
the favored one.

Ever since, I raced to be first:
out of the room,
out of the house,
to school,
to the cinema
even if it meant missing the end of the movie.

Then one day, I got distracted,
and he stepped out to the street before me.
Smiling that gentle smile,
he was struck by a car.

I remember my mother
how she rushed from the house
at the sound of the impact,
how she passed by me,
arms outstretched toward his lifeless body,
but she screamed my name.

To this day,
I’ve never corrected her mistake.

It was I who died,
and he who lived.

Sometimes grief chooses the wrong name. And sometimes, we let it.

#grief #twins #jealousy #identity #motherhood #birth #trauma #loss #silence #memory

The Quantum Bound Poet 2d

This Will Sound Better When I'm Dead

I’ve hidden lost sermons in my casual breath.
I folded them tight, pushed them into sarcasm.
We laughed at the joke, but you missed the ambiguity.
Some words only sharpen once their form leaves a chasm.

Some things we call unstable, wrong, or unfit—
Become relics we look to, only once their time’s gone.
No one hears the meaning of a prophet, mid-scream,
But we quote them the day that their truth breaks the dawn.

Some of us never even asked to be understood,
We can only hope to echo in your afterthought.
Because truth’s never loud—It’s subtle... Its dissonant…
So, its often mistaken, or ignored left to rot.

I live like a myth half-believed by its maker.
I pulse in and out, like static through wires.
My silence burns louder than sermons of choirs,
In golden temples built on sinful desires.

I left signals in inkblots, on letters I never sent,
And in the way that I’d pause before saying goodbye.
One day you might study those absences closer—
They’ll sing of my essence when I can no longer try.

Cause I once left my essence outside in the rain.
Just to see if it rots, or if a new one would sprout.
Turns out, it likes to sing—but only backwards,
And only to those who tried blocking it out.

This left me so lost that I swallowed a compass,
Just to feel in my gut, something real point to me.
But the needle kept swaying like my body still does.
Some directions are given, some were never meant to be.

If you were to ask me what my words really mean,
I might say, “What makes you think they mean anything?”
Meaning is a parasite; it only lives when it’s fed—
And I’ve starved that parasite to death. Repeatedly…

There’s a hallway in me that will never lead out—
Just dissociates to ensure you’re alone.
The paradox is fixed. You can’t change its course.
You’d rather tread blind, but it demands being shown.

I might carve these bitter truths into the air.
Won’t see them, but you’ll cough, and know they were there.
You’d blame me for the smoke, and you’d call me unstable.
Ignore my intention, or you might not even care.

And maybe I am filthy, misbegotten, and unstable.
But when my tremors stop, I hope you notice my frame.
And the glow that I buried, might finally surface.
Then you might learn to love me for the darkness you shamed.

You might quote this clean, rid my words of the blood.
Say my signals were sent, from the God in your head.
When you sing my sad sonnets, you might guild them in gold.
I promise... This sounds so much better when I’m dead.

©
♦ Đerek Λbraxas ♦️
"The Quantum Bound Poet"

#unheard #introspection #dissociative #deep #thoughtprovoking #memory #reverence #grief #reflection #existential

The Invisible Poet 2d

memory

oh how I remember
when I was a kid
that I thought drinking
and driving
meant any kind of beverage
and got so nervous
when I saw my parents
drinking water
while driving
oh how I remember
how I innocent
and naive
I was

#memory #innocent #naive #remember #wheniwasakid

William A Gibson 2d

midghost

She undressed in the mirror.
Only the reflection watched.
I found her candle,
cold and forgotten.

Her hands moved like smoke
understanding how to be skin again.
Not performance. Not pleasure.
Just unlearning the habit of vanishing.

Her shadow held her shape
longer than I did.
She said: “Stay,
but forget.”

Her child slept, somewhere,
dreaming oceans away.
She etched a name in glass steam,
a word that burned too bright to keep,
then let it melt under hot breath.

There was a song
caught in the ceiling,
something we never played
but always meant to.

I kissed her hair while it was still hair
and not a question
left behind on a pillow.

I opened the door,
it sang some other man’s name.
A line drawn, erased. No message left.
The room forgot its language.
My ghost obeyed
and lifted.

#intimacy #memory #grief #loss #ghost #surrealism #vanishing #quiet #gothic #domestic