#memory poems on Hello Poetry

Abbas Dedanwala Sep 5

There comes a night,
within which silence
changes perplexion.
No longer soft with hope,
but hard with truth.
No crickets to chirp.
No cars to roam.
Just a frigid breeze,
Signaling the setting of summer.

Tonight,
this moon does not shine.
and the stars..
They mockingly stare back,
without any hint of
destiny promised.

But I remember.
I remember what was
once
promised to me.

Warmer nights.
Where a couple would ingite love through storm.
With foolish words, forgiving hands and any efforts that their youth could muster.
I have learned however,
that even a flame once fierce,
can gutter in its own smoke.

Tonight is such a Night of No Return.
where I release a name into wind
and no longer chase the answer.
Where you walk your road,
and I walk mine,
and the crossroads we were once meant to embrace upon,
dissolve into dust.

#breakup #love #partner #relationships #memory #her #him #destiny

William A Gibson Sep 4

smoke remains

4AM-
a boy runs across
the four-lane roadway,

eyes like rare stones,
face burlap-creased dust,
jean shorts, a dolphin backpack
meant for someone smaller.

I track in my car,
take the exit that curves
around an abandoned encampment.

I find cement steps,
but the boy is gone.

Only smoke remains:
a hooded figure curled
in a doorway of a derelict building,
an empty tent split by knife.

The world recedes,
layered, unbroken.

another vision settling
into the mind,
a thick silence I fold
into the others.

#night #boy #vanish #smoke #encampment #memory #silence #mind

AnonymousR Sep 4

Love in a Graveyard

On a moonlit night, when the sky seemed red
A knight was found,putting a thorny rose, on a firefly's bed

A knight so brave, a hero, who once fought for his land
Yet,the one, he cherished most, withered in his own hand

It was, as if, a love with a fairytale
He sought to offer his life,to simply draw her in a veil

He thought, he knew, it was all, but a fiction in his mind
Yet,he crossed countless rivers,searching for an exit so kind

Such a dazzling light in a place so dark
Having a dance of death, in a forbidden park

He searched and searched for an eternal eternity
Yet,he couldn’t find, even a beginning of desired destiny

He did all, that a mortal could
Even so, he couldn’t find what was misunderstood

The eyes seemed to deceive, as he saw his firefly in the graveyard
The sky began to cry, as he ran towards her, leaving behind his vanguard

Even, if, it was, all a lie,he only wanted to see a glimpse of her light
A light so bright, that could made him the nation's knight

The graveyard turned into the heaven's garden as they embraced each-other
A garden bloomed with roses and dahlias,where butterflies danced without a bother

A sky so imagery, with such a gentle breeze
A sun so warm,lying under the shade of fruitful trees

Tiny chirping birds, played and sang all day-long
Perhaps,this was the place,where she could belong

They spent an eternity in such a brief of time
In a graveyard so beautiful, as if living in a rhyme

Refusing to let the river flow,they spent the happiest while
Untill the knight,saw a thorny rose, from a thousand mile

The heavenly sky began to embrace night, as dark clouds began to form
They knew,it was time,bading farewell,to their little dorm

Yet,they embraced the museum of destiny while praparing to leave with a smile
When the knight, for the last time,looked at the thorny rose,from a thousand mile

On a moonlit night, with a sky so red
A knight was found lying beside a sparking bed

As vision began to fail, he held onto his crest
When the firefly was seen,lying on his chest

In their own bed, they lied,beside each-other, peacefully forever
Perhaps,this time,happiness reached them,without falling in the slumber

May the birds,together, for eternal, cross boundless,only journeying forward
Untill the end of all,yet none, living among the fireflies,a story, about "love in a graveyard"..

#love #grief #fantasy #memory #narrarive #graveyard #reality

Zelda Sep 4

Sweet Child

Sweet child,
you came to me
in a dream.

My arms wrapped around
your deep blue
checkered shirt,
a kiss pressed gently
to your hair —
it was the warmest hug.

Thank you.

Sweet child,
how are your adventures
across the ever-expanding universe?
I hope you’re having a blast.

Little traveler —
I really want to see you, again.
Come back —
I really miss you.
Come back —
whenever you like.

Together again...
if only in dreams

Together again...
someday

Sweet child,
Sweet, Sweet child
I love you

Written June-July 2025
Published: September 4, 2025

#grief #love #loss #universe #memory #lullaby

William A Gibson Sep 1

Moonlit Witch

Middle age is a drawer of bottles,
labels rubbed blank,
small tablets stamped
with numbers I can’t read,
others chalk-white,
anonymous as bones.

That August night I woke,
a moth in the moonlight,
wings two halves of a Viking ship.
They say if it maps all four corners
you’re finished.
My head bricked with mucus,
her throat raw-
our marriage a duet
two instruments coughing through the score.

I whispered- moth,
as her eyes opened, glowing like sunken lanterns.
It weighed two thousand pounds,
wings lifting her hair
like a bride of the dead.

Two optimism pills
waited on my table.
I chewed them dry,
chalk cementing my tongue,
the insect’s brain ticking in my skull
like a clock in a gothic castle.

Then water rose inside us-
first a seep, then a tide,
spilling warm rivers across the floorboards.
The dark room brightened green,
cypress arms cracked plaster,
reeds whispered spells older than fever.

Fireflies stitched lanterns along the walls,
crocodiles slid through like priests of the river.
We held hands as the bed turned pirogue,
drifting through brackwater green.

Above us the moth circled-
no longer omen but guide,
its wings stirring moonlight into spell.
Papa Legba opened the crossing,
Maman Brigitte lit the reeds with flame.
We: two elders slipping from sickness into swamp,
breath turned to whirlpools,
our oaths ferried
on the moth’s traité tide.

#middleage #flu #marriage #memory #mortality #swamp #myth #ritual #gothic #moth

kortu valentine Aug 31

i was somewhere lost in england.

i don’t think i’ve ever been
more in love with a city
than i was with you.
it’s inexplicable.

the more i see
this spirit of community,
of togetherness
where i live now,
the more i miss my real home.

it might be another country,
but you took me in,
held me like your own.

one hundred
and sixty thousand people,
yet it was always one:
the date whose flatmate
played in my favourite band,
the pub where a singer walked in
and we had to act cool,
even with fifty strangers, once,
crammed into a living room.

you were secret codes
and piano bars,
ropes above the thames,
carnivals and day festivals.
meeting someone,
and keeping them forever.

it was never just work.
it was passageways, and talent
rising like ivy through stone,
having the world
at my fingertips
as though sitting on a throne
without having a clue.

but i still did
what i thought i should,
and found myself alive
in the whole of you.

this is a love letter to oxford.
august 31, 2025

#oxford #england #homesick #love #loveletter #longing #memory #reflection #country #city

Aaamour Aug 29

observing

golden flowers on her dress 
like stars in the night sky
 bringing comfort to distant eyes

#love #unrequited #crush #observe #dress #memory

Cassie love Aug 27

If the dead returned

If the dead were to return from their world,
Would they still remember us?
Would they still smile when they saw us,
Or have our names scattered like dust in the wind?

Has time already changed too much -
Would they find us strangers,
Different from the ones they left,
Unfamiliar in their eyes?

Would they return with new faces,
Attributes we cannot recognize
Barely recalling
The shelters they once called home?

It's a riddle I keep chasing,
A puzzle without an answer,
A question that lingers in silence-
Unsolved.

This poem is a meditation on the haunting thought of what it would feel if those we lost suddenly returned

#death #time #memory #haunting

Shay Caroline Simmons Aug 25

Busy Oak Afternoons

I was young once, living on hope and ten dollars
in an upstairs flat in Royal Oak, Michigan.

I used to eat at The Busy Oak, where junkies and drunks lived in the weird apartments on the second and third floors.
I went to the movies at The Washington.

I remember buying a jacket at Joe's Army Navy Surplus,
and a bright red scarf at some corner boutique where 80s chic was so thick that it made this ordinary girl feel out of place.

The sky was a brilliant September blue that day,
and I was on my last fine free days of being semi-employed,
an art I had perfected all through my twenties...

I needed time to read Vonnegut and Tolstoy,
and to go see Far From The Madding Crowd and Desert Hearts.

Late that afternoon I sat on the wood floor of my little place,
listening to Joni sing I Had A King, while I read the album jacket and my dog slept in the only chair.

My door was open, as if to let the future in;
I was getting sober and I was getting older.

Who knew then that I would shortly get a real job, a car,
and marry some other damaged soul?

Who knew that the Busy Oak would become trendy stores for out of towners,
or that The Washington would become a stage theater?

Who knew that I would ride by those places every day, a couple of decades later,
having divorced, come out, come clean,

Or that I would still listen to Joni sing about kings and seagulls,
and still wear a red scarf against the chill?

Not me,
whoever I was,
waving to her future self
going by on the street like a ghost begun
but not yet walking the earth.
_

2012

#travelstories #jonimitchell #busyoak #time #memory #change