#sadgirlwrites - Hello Poetry

You said you were tired. I said, “Me too.” You said the day felt heavy. I laughed, said that’s just how life is. We compared headaches, sleepless nights, the way getting out of bed sometimes felt like lifting concrete. I thought we were the same. I thought we were surviving the same storm. I didn’t know yours was already flooding the house. The thing about living in the dark for so long is your eyes adjust. You stop noticing how little light there is. You stop asking questions. You stop looking for exits. So when you told me you were drowning, I thought you meant what I meant. Barely keeping your head above water. Miserable, but alive. I didn’t know you couldn’t touch the bottom anymore. I didn’t know every joke was a life jacket coming apart in your hands. You smiled. I smiled. You said, “I’m okay.” And I believed you because I was saying it too. Now I replay every conversation. Every “I’m tired.” Every “I’m fine.” Every moment I could’ve stopped and listened better. I keep wondering if sadness can recognise itself. If two storms can stand side by side and still not see each other. Because I knew darkness. I knew empty rooms, silent drives home, nights that stretched forever. I knew the weight. And somehow I still didn’t recognise how much heavier yours had become. Now when it rains I think about how we both stood under the same clouds. How I thought we were sharing an umbrella. How I never realised you were already soaked through.

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36m ago

Jun 4, 2026 at 7:59 AM UTC

WiltedEverly

Already Soaked Through

You said you were tired. I said, “Me too.” You said the day felt heavy. I laughed, said that’s just how life is. We compared headaches, sleepless nights, the way getting out of bed sometimes felt like lifting concrete. I thought we were the same. I thought we were surviving the same storm. I didn’t know yours was already flooding the house. The thing about living in the dark for so long is your eyes adjust. You stop noticing how little light there is. You stop asking questions. You stop looking for exits. So when you told me you were drowning, I thought you meant what I meant. Barely keeping your head above water. Miserable, but alive. I didn’t know you couldn’t touch the bottom anymore. I didn’t know every joke was a life jacket coming apart in your hands. You smiled. I smiled. You said, “I’m okay.” And I believed you because I was saying it too. Now I replay every conversation. Every “I’m tired.” Every “I’m fine.” Every moment I could’ve stopped and listened better. I keep wondering if sadness can recognise itself. If two storms can stand side by side and still not see each other. Because I knew darkness. I knew empty rooms, silent drives home, nights that stretched forever. I knew the weight. And somehow I still didn’t recognise how much heavier yours had become. Now when it rains I think about how we both stood under the same clouds. How I thought we were sharing an umbrella. How I never realised you were already soaked through.

65

The battlefield may have healed, but the trenches are still there. Now the field blooms red. Poppies scatter across hillsides like little mouths left open, soft and crimson, fed by something buried deep below. From a distance, it looks beautiful. That is how these things survive by learning how to disguise themselves. The earth sealed over long ago. No smoke. No sirens. No fresh graves left exposed to weather. Only quiet dips in the ground where damage once lived violently. Only careful hands pulling sleeves lower when the seasons change. The battlefield may have healed, but the trenches are still there. Sometimes they ache in cold weather. Sometimes in warm. Sometimes for no reason at all. And beneath the poppies, the soil still remembers every place it was split open. I think that is what scares me the most, not the ruin itself, but how ordinary it becomes. How the body adapts to carrying small private wars. How people compliment the flowers without noticing what feeds them. Every spring, the field blooms red again.

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May 10

May 10, 2026 at 5:57 PM UTC

WiltedEverly

What Blooms There

The battlefield may have healed, but the trenches are still there. Now the field blooms red. Poppies scatter across hillsides like little mouths left open, soft and crimson, fed by something buried deep below. From a distance, it looks beautiful. That is how these things survive by learning how to disguise themselves. The earth sealed over long ago. No smoke. No sirens. No fresh graves left exposed to weather. Only quiet dips in the ground where damage once lived violently. Only careful hands pulling sleeves lower when the seasons change. The battlefield may have healed, but the trenches are still there. Sometimes they ache in cold weather. Sometimes in warm. Sometimes for no reason at all. And beneath the poppies, the soil still remembers every place it was split open. I think that is what scares me the most, not the ruin itself, but how ordinary it becomes. How the body adapts to carrying small private wars. How people compliment the flowers without noticing what feeds them. Every spring, the field blooms red again.

38

1. Learn to fly 2. Fly away I keep it folded in my pocket like a receipt for something I didn’t mean to buy. Some days, “learn” feels too ambitious so I just stand on tiptoes in the kitchen like maybe gravity is negotiable if I’m gentle enough. I watch birds the way people watch miracles like there’s a trick to it they’re not telling anyone. Nan says “open the windows let the air in” as if air has ever stayed just because it was invited. I make tea, hold the warmth between my hands like it’s proof of something like it might seep in if I wait long enough. There are moments, small, almost embarrassing ones, where the light hits the floor just right or a ladybug lands on my sleeve and I think, maybe this is it maybe this is what staying feels like but the list stays the same 1. learn to fly 2. fly away I haven’t crossed anything off yet just added, quietly, at the bottom 3. stay (just for today)

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May 4

May 4, 2026 at 4:55 AM UTC

WiltedEverly

To do list:

1. Learn to fly 2. Fly away I keep it folded in my pocket like a receipt for something I didn’t mean to buy. Some days, “learn” feels too ambitious so I just stand on tiptoes in the kitchen like maybe gravity is negotiable if I’m gentle enough. I watch birds the way people watch miracles like there’s a trick to it they’re not telling anyone. Nan says “open the windows let the air in” as if air has ever stayed just because it was invited. I make tea, hold the warmth between my hands like it’s proof of something like it might seep in if I wait long enough. There are moments, small, almost embarrassing ones, where the light hits the floor just right or a ladybug lands on my sleeve and I think, maybe this is it maybe this is what staying feels like but the list stays the same 1. learn to fly 2. fly away I haven’t crossed anything off yet just added, quietly, at the bottom 3. stay (just for today)

36

Supermarket, fluorescent hum overhead, softening everything that should feel sharper. I take a basket before I need one, something to hold so I don’t look lost. At home everything repeats. Nan in the kitchen, something always baking. Pop at the nook with tea, steam at the same hour. Dad behind a closed door or not there at all. Nothing loud. Nothing wrong. Just set. Here, people move like they belong to where they are going. An old woman slow through the aisle, coat brushing her legs, bread tucked under her arm. No pause. No search. Just forward. I watch her until she disappears. Something in me doesn’t follow. I’m still here. Holding nothing. Further down a young man studies his receipt like it might say more. Milk. Frozen meals. Something sweet. He folds it carefully. Pockets it. I look away before he looks back. I drift. Pick things up. Put them back. My basket stays light. Not empty unfinished. The aisles stretch on full of people who already decided. At checkout, I place something down. A chicken caesar wrap in a plastic box. Already made. Already chosen. Beep. The receipt prints thin proof I was here at all. Outside, I stand still watching the automatic doors open and close like nothing is waiting for me. The world keeps moving anyway cars, footsteps, voices as if I never stood there at all. Then I leave and it doesn’t notice.

0

Apr 18

Apr 18, 2026 at 9:57 AM UTC

WiltedEverly

Receipts I Wasnt Meant to Read

Supermarket, fluorescent hum overhead, softening everything that should feel sharper. I take a basket before I need one, something to hold so I don’t look lost. At home everything repeats. Nan in the kitchen, something always baking. Pop at the nook with tea, steam at the same hour. Dad behind a closed door or not there at all. Nothing loud. Nothing wrong. Just set. Here, people move like they belong to where they are going. An old woman slow through the aisle, coat brushing her legs, bread tucked under her arm. No pause. No search. Just forward. I watch her until she disappears. Something in me doesn’t follow. I’m still here. Holding nothing. Further down a young man studies his receipt like it might say more. Milk. Frozen meals. Something sweet. He folds it carefully. Pockets it. I look away before he looks back. I drift. Pick things up. Put them back. My basket stays light. Not empty unfinished. The aisles stretch on full of people who already decided. At checkout, I place something down. A chicken caesar wrap in a plastic box. Already made. Already chosen. Beep. The receipt prints thin proof I was here at all. Outside, I stand still watching the automatic doors open and close like nothing is waiting for me. The world keeps moving anyway cars, footsteps, voices as if I never stood there at all. Then I leave and it doesn’t notice.

75

The city keeps him awake. Not with noise, with glow. Screens layered over screens, light stacked into light until the night forgets itself. He sits in it willingly, move pieces across a digital board, black to white, white to black, predicting endings ten steps before they arrive. Everything here follows rules. Everything can be won, or lost, or learned. Outside, the sky is sealed shut. He says stars don’t come anymore. She wraps herself in a blanket that smells like dust and sun, and slips out to the paddocks where the world finally exhales. Grass whispers against itself. Fences creak like they remember things. The dark is not empty here, it watches back. She lowers herself into it, curling small against the cold, like if she takes up less space it might leave her alone. But it always finds her. It settles in slow, threading through her ribs, pulling tight in places no one else can see. The sky, at least, breaks open for her. Constellations scatter themselves ancient and indifferent, and every so often something tears loose. A streak of light, brief and burning, gone before it means anything. She gathers those moments anyways. Wishes on them, quick, quiet, desperate, like pressing her hands against a door that won’t open. He studies pattern. Knows how knights move in L-shapes, how queens dominate the board, how every mistake can be traced back to a single, careless choice. He understands pressure, anticipation, the slow collapse of a position you can’t quite save. But this this has no board. No turns. No rules. Just the way her voice sometimes thins, like it’s being pulled somewhere else. Just the way silence sits too comfortably on her shoulders. She lies back further into the grass, blanket slipping, cold seeping in unnoticed. The sky keeps undoing itself above her, small, beautiful failures falling out of the dark. She wishes harder. Not for things, not really just for somewhere else. He pauses mid game, cursor hovering, a move waiting to be made. For a moment, he stares past the screen at nothing, at everything he can’t name. He wishes, not to anything in particular, just into the dim, electric quiet that whatever is pulling her under would let go.

0

Apr 11

Apr 11, 2026 at 6:36 PM UTC

WiltedEverly

Two Kinds of Nights

The city keeps him awake. Not with noise, with glow. Screens layered over screens, light stacked into light until the night forgets itself. He sits in it willingly, move pieces across a digital board, black to white, white to black, predicting endings ten steps before they arrive. Everything here follows rules. Everything can be won, or lost, or learned. Outside, the sky is sealed shut. He says stars don’t come anymore. She wraps herself in a blanket that smells like dust and sun, and slips out to the paddocks where the world finally exhales. Grass whispers against itself. Fences creak like they remember things. The dark is not empty here, it watches back. She lowers herself into it, curling small against the cold, like if she takes up less space it might leave her alone. But it always finds her. It settles in slow, threading through her ribs, pulling tight in places no one else can see. The sky, at least, breaks open for her. Constellations scatter themselves ancient and indifferent, and every so often something tears loose. A streak of light, brief and burning, gone before it means anything. She gathers those moments anyways. Wishes on them, quick, quiet, desperate, like pressing her hands against a door that won’t open. He studies pattern. Knows how knights move in L-shapes, how queens dominate the board, how every mistake can be traced back to a single, careless choice. He understands pressure, anticipation, the slow collapse of a position you can’t quite save. But this this has no board. No turns. No rules. Just the way her voice sometimes thins, like it’s being pulled somewhere else. Just the way silence sits too comfortably on her shoulders. She lies back further into the grass, blanket slipping, cold seeping in unnoticed. The sky keeps undoing itself above her, small, beautiful failures falling out of the dark. She wishes harder. Not for things, not really just for somewhere else. He pauses mid game, cursor hovering, a move waiting to be made. For a moment, he stares past the screen at nothing, at everything he can’t name. He wishes, not to anything in particular, just into the dim, electric quiet that whatever is pulling her under would let go.

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