Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Isaac C May 15
The day is near when you will not
always want to share your soul.

Learn every flower has spent some
hours in daylight, aiding growth.

Next to a sprout, you're a high tower.
You have felt the sun's warm light.
Even if you grew in a forest's shade,
some of it made its way to you.

People shame you and think you'll hide,
so face them and strip them of power.
They disrupt peace because they're sour.

Most people won't think about you twice.

But there are some who take time to hate.
They think they know the way you move.
Your tempo, if they follow, can subdue.
You can lull them into a hypnotic state.

Since you have an audience, create.
Defy expectations and surprise them.
If you're brave enough, let them notice.

You can act out a monologue on stage.

You have the spotlight; it's yours, alone.
Leave when the sky is loud but the sidewalk is quiet.
When the door clicks shut like it’s keeping a secret,
don’t flinch.
Let your hands hang heavy,
the silence has its own grip.

Take only what fits in your chest,
you’ll be shocked what doesn’t.
Use only what won’t puncture your lungs.
(Even breath can betray you.)

Don’t check the mirror.
It lies loudest when you’re quiet.

If you must cry, do it in motion.
Stillness makes grief cocky,
then it hands you a mirror labeled “proof”
and waits.

Let the memory bruise.
Don’t label it.
Names are spells.

Closure’s a mirage
that waves from the distance
and never once turns around.

When the day feels unbearable,
bear it.
Not because you’re strong—
because you’re stubborn
and still here.

By month three,
his name will taste like static.
By month six,
you’ll forget the exact color of his laugh.
And by month twelve—
you’ll mistake the whole thing for a metaphor.

You’ll almost be right.
But even metaphors
break skin.
Memory crusts,
but it never closes.
for when you finally go and don't look back
Jonathan Moya May 15
The empty lot of the abandoned car dealership
is overrun with dandelions, thistles, and sticker weeds.

On the right is a Baptist church standing
sternly against the invasive plants.  

The ministry’s gardener sprays Roundup
on the weaker creepers while his assistant
uses a torch on the deeply rooted ones.  

On the left is a BBQ specializing in Nashville Hot Chicken.  

Congregants fill the abandoned spaces on Sundays,
parking in every white-lined spot.  

On weekdays, the meat, pork, and poultry adherents
occupy the fringes of the cracked tarmac.

Saturdays are the days for the wildflowers to bloom,
the sticker weeds to cling to the cuffs of children’s pants,
and the hindquarters of every sniffing dog.

Church festival days were the time for the lot to be filled
with popcorn, churro, and taco carts-
ring toss, balloon pop, and fish bowl toss booths-
a bounce house, and the heroes of the Bible
obstacle course for the children.

Halloween week was the one time the BBQ joint
had the lot to itself. It erected a tent of horror
filled with demons, bedsheet ghosts, and demented chainsaw-wielding dwarves. The finale featured
the patrons being strapped to an altar and exorcised
by a defrocked priest and ******* clad nuns.

The other scary ride was the tunnel of love and marriage.  Couples were faux-married by a maniacal judge and,
by the end, were divorced by the jurist’s serial killer twin. What happened in between the nondisclosure agreements everyone signed kept it all private and secret.

Since the horror house made a lot of money and the church received a large sponsor donation,    
the deacons ignored the false sins and degradations.
  
Anyway, by Monday, the altar was gone,  
the neon horror tent collapsed and  
the sticker weeds reclaimed their corners,  
waiting for the next act.

Most days, I drive past it all—the sermons,
the spice rub, the ghost  dealership, the exorcisms,  
and I wonder if this patch of cracked asphalt  
knows what it is. Or if it even matters.

But nothing stops the dandelions from
dancing in the breeze and car exhaust air,
singing their minor chord hallelujahs to life.
        
On Sundays the faithful return to their pulpits.
By Fridays, the altar is a karaoke stage,  
with the pastor belting out “Highway to Hell”  
between deep-fried sermons.

And then lunch at the BBQ on the other side.
Call me a failure,
a scissor-less tailor.
But I’m not a terrorist—
I’m a trial-and-errorist!

I fall into fire,
then rise even higher.
I seek inner flash,
not just piles of cash.

Accept that I’m different—
I don’t swim with the current.
I’m not here to conform;
I’m here to transform.

Born to learn,
my brain’s a disk to burn.
Life runs on zero-one—
The sky holds the moon and sun.

Each soul crafts its story,
So I’m not so sorry
for narrating mine—
whether I fail or shine.

Write. Rewrite. Restart.
My life itself is the art.
A personal manifesto in verse — celebrating failure, transformation, and the courage to rewrite one’s life. A poetic ode to resilience in a world that demands conformity.
Vicky Donald May 11
She was born where the walls would tremble and sway,

Where love came in shouting, then drifted away.

Where silence could cut like a whispering blade,

And kindness was rare as the warmth of May.



Her mother drank storms and let them cascade

On young, aching shoulders, alone and afraid.

She never asked thunder to fall from the skies,

But still bore the weight under tear-salted eyes.



She learned that trust is a word carved out in stone-

Left out in the rain, eroded, alone.

She gave hers to hands that vowed to stay,

But they shattered her trust and then walked away.



At thirteen, her world didn’t fully fall down,

But something inside her refused to be found.

She stopped seeking mirrors, stopped seeking sound,

Felt sure that no soul would hear if she drowned.



Bur deep in the dark, she found ink and a page-

A space to release her quietest rage.

She wrote to survive, let sorrow flow,

To dream of a world where kind hands would grow.



word upon word, she built from the pain,

A self, made of fire, of hope, of the rain.

She grew-not just older-but fiercely and right,

A warrior shaped in the absence of light.



Now she’s a mother, a woman, a flame,

Who shields her own from sorrow and shame.

She listens, she holds, she stands strong and true,

Becoming the love, she never once knew.



The past still whispers, but cannot command;

It doesn’t define her, it doesn’t stand.

She writes-not to flee, but to chart the climb,

Each line a reminder: she rose every time.



She tells the girl hidden deep in her mind,

“We made it, we lived, we rose, and we shined.

The monsters are silent-they don’t get the end.

We write the last word, with strength as our pen.”
Cadmus May 12
Don’t be alarmed
if evil blooms
where you sowed
your gentlest good.

Not all earth
welcomes roots
some soils rot
what should have stood.

So plant with love,
but learn the ground,
for even light
can be misunderstood.
A reflection on misplaced effort, toxic environments, and the wisdom of discernment.
Cadmus May 11
And just like that…

I summoned the courage
To Burn the page
I once folded with trembling care,

It now curls in flame,
a silent flare
of who i was…

Is no longer here.
A reflection on letting go of a version of the self once protected, now transcended.
Cadmus May 11
If one day you break, too tired to cope,
And search the dark for hands of hope
Don’t reach for theirs, they come and go,
With fleeting warmth and faces you don’t know.

Just lift your left and find your right,
The one that’s stayed through every fight.
Your other hand, scarred, quiet, true
Has carried all that life gave you.

It wiped your tears when no one cared,
It held your chest when pain was bared.
No vow, no oath, no distant friend
Can match the grip it dares to lend.

So fold your fingers, let them bind,
And trust the touch you always find.
For storms may rage and trials descend
But none defeat the hand you lend.

The world breaks many, but never the one
Who learns to stand with hands of one.
This poem is a quiet tribute to self-reliance, the strength found not in others, but in one’s own steady presence. The “other hand” is a metaphor for the part of us that endures without applause, comforts without condition, and rises when everything else falls away.
Sreeyaa May 10
Eyelids fluttering closed, I see those eyes,
Swirls of hazel that still thaw my heart,
Maybe I should've known from the start,
now I'm paying the price, tearing me apart

I let him in, a little too fast,
held on to him a little too tight,
thought I'd survive the blast,
that I'd rise, not fall in the fight

It's been a whole year since,
the scars remain fresh still,
maybe one day I'll feel the thrill,
when my heart puts together it's flints
Next page