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Jamesb Jan 25
You can really hurt yourself
If you hold your breath too long,
Headaches and dulled vision,
Part way to passing out with enough
Determination,
Add water and depth and a swift rise,
The bends as bubbles of gas
Form in unhelpful places,
Or swam too deep too far
And barely making the surface
That suddenly seems so far
From my feebly flapping limbs,

I guess we have all held
Our breath across the years,
Waiting on some thing or someone
To finally come good,
Or arrive or even just to be,
Somehow or somewhere or somewhen,
Breath suspended,
Life on hold just waiting with
Inextinguishable hope
Of something good,
And precious,
Worth waiting for,

Well I know I have,
And I know I have been the one,
The thing and or the circumstance
That has caused breath to be held,
And to my shame not always
Was I worth it,
But now - actually it is me with bursting lungs,
And the pain is near unbearable,
Perhaps time to let out that air with
A loud and pain filled gush,
To turn and start the swim
To shore

Some dreams are never meant

To be
Vira Jan 14
I realised that the pattern was repeating over and over.
One day, I decided to face it.
I opened my wounds and surrendered.
Praying for healing,
Feeling the pain.
Then, it came.
I mustered enough courage to sit with the sensations in my body, feeling them, instead of
shutting it, numbing it,
running away, wishing away,
I stood there and faced it.
It was painful.
It felt like
my heart was shattered into thousand pieces.
my gut was wrenched out.
the nerves in my head pulled in all directions.
as if I was looted of every ounce of blood from my body.
It was raw.
It was cathartic.
Tears weren’t enough to bear them. Self pity did not help.
I cried, I begged, I screamed, I wallowed.
Finally, I gave up.
I breathed.
I just breathed, feeling the breath.
I had to let it all in before letting it all go.
Then, came some relief.
I see glimpses of freedom and joy,
It feels like a triumph.
It feels soft.
It feels calm.
It feels good.
It feels god.
That must be the healing.
This is how the process of healing trauma seems to me. I did not know where the pain came from.
Bolaji Temilola Dec 2023
When time plays games with you,
You can't force it or manipulate it.
All you can do, All that is Left to you
Is to surrender  yourself to time.

I read somewhere "that life is what happens to you while you're making other plans.
Don't fight it! Don't stop it!!
Accept it!!! And move on with your life.
When the time is right,we will see each other again
I am moving on!
Zywa Aug 2023
A kiss, naked I

stand before you, I'm not me --


I am your lover.
Novel "The PowerBook" (2000, Jeanette Winterson), chapter "SEARCH"

Collection "Loves Tricks Gains Pains in the 0s and 10s"
Zywa Aug 2023
Darling, I don't want

to conquer you, but to be --


absorbed in your fire.
Novel "The PowerBook" (2000, Jeanette Winterson), chapter "HELP"

Collection "Loves Tricks Gains Pains in the 0s and 10s"
Zywa Jul 2023
I was seventeen,

with all my being I longed --


to offer myself.
Letter to Antonio Cervi, June 29th, 1933, Antonia Pozzi)

Collection "Love Mind and Death"
Zywa Jul 2023
A romantic kiss;

her first, so her eyes tell me --


dying passively.
Novel "De laatste kans - De geschiedenis van een liefde" ("The last chance - The history of a love", 1960, Simon Vestdijk), chapter 1-3

Collection "Inmost"
Steve Page Apr 2023
Hope can hurt
all the more the longer
it stays misplaced

and as it stays,
it deteriorates,
degrades, decays,

it despairs into a fainter shade
of hopeless surrender

until, against all hope,
it leaves
hurt.
is hope the friend it purports to be?
Zywa Mar 2023
As a baby, I

had a lot of fun falling --


into daddy's hands.
For Madelief dK

Collection "Ifless"
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