#survivors
The morning after you take your life
will be like any other day.
The sun will rise.
Early risers will start their commutes.
Your phone will lie by your bed.
Except there will be unread messages.
Not a few. Not one kind.
First confusion.
Then repetition.
Then panic pretending
to be calm sentences.
“where are you”
“please answer”
“this isn’t funny”
“just text me back”
like words can build a bridge
if you stack enough of them fast enough.
Your mother will stop trying to be calm at some point.
She’ll switch between certainty and apology
without noticing the difference anymore.
“I should’ve checked.”
“I should’ve pushed.”
“I should’ve known.”
“I didn’t know.”
“I’m here.” “I’m here.” “I’m here.”
Like saying it enough times
could still change
what already happened.
The morning after you take your life,
your sister will sit in her car for hours
trying to find just one more thing she could’ve done
so that it wouldn’t turn out this way.
And she doesn’t know how to live
in a world that no longer has you in it.
Your room will still exist in the same shape it always did.
Bed unmade in the same way
like time stopped mid-motion.
Clothes still folded over chairs.
A charger still plugged in
like it’s waiting for you to come back for it.
Someone will stand in the doorway
and lose track
of how long they’ve been there.
Because entering feels wrong.
And leaving feels worse.
The morning after you take your life,
your dog will still wait.
It will go to the wrong doors first.
Then the right ones.
Then stop choosing at all, confused.
No one explained where you went
in a way it could understand.
At school, your name will still appear on lists.
Attendance. Seating charts. Group work.
A teacher will pause
just long enough for people to notice
then keep going anyway
because schedules don’t know how to grieve.
A pencil will drop in the classroom
and stay there longer than it should
because no one feels like moving first.
The morning after you take your life,
your friends will split into two kinds of silence.
The kind that talks too much.
And the kind that stops completely.
Neither one helps.
Someone will sit in your usual seat
and regret it instantly
without knowing why.
It will feel like sitting in something
that doesn’t belong to the present anymore.
Your locker will stay closed longer than it should.
Not because anyone is waiting for you to return
but because opening it feels like confirming something final.
There will be things you were in the middle of.
Half-finished notes in margins.
A pen left uncapped.
A draft that never got sent.
A song paused,
waiting for you to listen to the rest.
The world will keep producing ordinary moments
that don’t know how to stop.
The morning after you take your life,
a classmate will get a joke stuck in their throat
because they remember you laughing
at something similar once.
Someone will walk past your usual route home
and slow down without meaning to.
A teacher will find a paper you turned in
and read the handwriting differently this time
like it belongs to someone farther away than they thought.
The morning after you take your life,
your world will still be waiting for you in small ways.
A message that should’ve been answered.
A door that should’ve opened.
A laugh that should’ve come from your side of the room.
And time will not move evenly for them.
It will loop.
It will freeze.
It will skip forward and snap back
like it can’t decide what day it is anymore.
Because grief doesn’t follow time.
It bends it.
The month after you take your life,
there will be concerts you would’ve gone to.
Bands you would’ve discovered early,
claiming they could read your mind,
and insisted everyone else listen.
People will be in crowds
screaming lyrics you never got to hear,
but would’ve known by heart.
The month after you take your life,
college decisions will arrive.
Somewhere, an acceptance letter will exist
with your name on it.
Somewhere else, a rejection that doesn’t matter anymore.
Not because you weren’t enough —
but because there is no longer anyone
to open either one.
And the hardest part isn’t that everything changes.
It’s that most things don’t.
The world continues.
People keep moving through it
like it didn’t lose anything.
But for the people who knew you —
who loved you in ways you may not have seen yet —
their world stopped that day
along with yours.
Apr 12
Apr 12, 2026 at 10:51 AM UTC
Broken Hearts
We live in a wounded world, where too many women carry scars they never chose. They were betrayed by the very ones they called love, by hands meant to protect them that instead broke them. They tried to speak, to report, to seek help, but too often their cry was lost in indifference and bureaucracy, in closed doors and empty promises. And while they suffer, their loved ones suffer too: parents who fear every silence, friends who see the light in their eyes fading, children who breathe pain without knowing how to name it. So often it begins with a simple and terrible truth: the man – partner, boyfriend, or husband – cannot accept abandonment, cannot accept the woman choosing freedom, saying, “this time, I save myself.” And in that sickened mind, in possession turning into obsession, the darkest shadow is born. Violence grows, poisons everything, and sometimes becomes the final tragedy: femicide, the unjust end of a heart that only wanted to live. These stories break us from within, remind us that every woman deserves to be heard, respected, protected. For no love can be born from possession, and no broken heart should ever die for the freedom to be herself.
Masi Roberto © 2025
I am an Italian poet and author of poetic and narrative books, all available on Amazon.
On my YouTube channel I read my poems every day, sharing emotions, reflections and the voice of the soul.
Thank you for taking the time to read this piece — may it touch your heart as it did mine while writing it.
Masi Roberto © 2025
Dec 7, 2025
Dec 7, 2025 at 1:42 PM UTC
Often of a late,
I think a you in our ever,
and I wonder if you ever
think of those very best
only, so, it must be best,
we always make believe.
But when ever comes sooner
than expected, but not really,
we can remember spirits we tried,
we may recollect lofty conventions,
we shall realize an old untirable knot
yeah, we can work it out,
its jus' gnosisnots religmental
imagine **** Cheney's therapy,
getting ready to be remembered…
while Donald Trump presides
over all military related honors
and old Don knew some gnoshit depths
of the return on investment in torture.
Nov 4, 2025
Nov 4, 2025 at 7:56 PM UTC
“I'll find them"
I say as I come across another corpse
The blood leaking out of the open wounds inflicted upon them.
Turning their intellect into a poison
that eats them inside out.
They're gone now (blanched from existence),
I look around
And see the bones on which
My “exceptionalism” stands.
Unnoticed by most
but I sense their ghosts in the spaces that should be filled.
The same system that killed my kin,
demands I cannibalize them
to sell me as a relic - a reminder of what was
But I never forget - or forgive - a murderer.
May 25, 2025
May 25, 2025 at 7:02 AM UTC
Human victims inhuman disease
Gases still fill memories chamber
Survivors a perpetual breed
Nov 13, 2024
Nov 13, 2024 at 11:22 AM UTC
Tunneling thoughts like rain
Craning through light clouds
Unsuspecting victims.
The fear
The tears
The temper tantrums;
A kind of rebuttal
That won't let our feet find land
We adjourned to rehearse,
but our efforts were null and void
Only to appease with flames
that licked our shriveled bodies
D r
i p
p i n
g
Kerosene
Tainted like ink Spilled on
Reams of paper
ruined like Christmas
A house warmed by Open flames
fallen candles Adorning
A naked kitchen My limp body,
Splayed beneath the oven
As
darkness indulges, It
consumes
The smoke, Fills
Each crevice
In your mind
Can you ever fight it
Burn your way back
To blissful ignorance.
Nov 20, 2023
Nov 20, 2023 at 1:59 PM UTC
descendants of those left behind,
they found fellowship with
a singularly brutal environment,
free roaming meanderers
of a crepuscular exclusion zone,
having trekked into
the camps of liquidators
to beg for scraps,
they nosed into empty buildings
and found safe places to sleep,
stopping at Café Desyatka
for some borscht,
the guides speak only of
visitor or occupant,
there are no tourists here,
only the genetically distinct
Mar 13, 2023
Mar 13, 2023 at 10:05 AM UTC
What is real to me
Is not real to you
The weight on my back
You can’t see from your angle
I must be so bored
To complain so **** often
As my spine starts to give out
Pain trickles down each vertebrae
I must want attention
When you ask why my feet ache
I tell you how a man filled my backpack with stones
Oh!
You know who i’m talking about!
What a piece of **** right?
Oh.
He would never do such a thing
Well,
Because,
He’s never done that to you.
That must mean my story’s not true.
I must be so sick
And ****** in the head
To be crying at night from the soreness years later
You’d think i’d adjust to the workout
Sometimes it doesn’t work out that way.
Who would want to be around someone with such a bad limp?
It’s just easier to stay in bed.
Then the pain is just mine.
And nobody gets to have an opinion on if it’s real or not.
Dec 15, 2021
Dec 15, 2021 at 5:00 AM UTC
When you come
Into my space
It makes me want to hide
And take my bones
And memories
And things I never
Speak of
And climb inside
A closet that leads to Narnia
Or somewhere else
Than here
Cause when you come
into my space
So does every single
Fear.
So stay away.
-L.Frost
Nov 1, 2020
Nov 1, 2020 at 6:40 PM UTC
Survivors
by Michael R. Burch
(for the victims and survivors of 9/11 and their families)
In truth, we do not feel the horror
of the survivors,
but what passes for horror:
a shiver of “empathy.”
We too are “survivors,”
if to survive is to snap back
from the sight of death
like a turtle retracting its neck.
Published by The HyperTexts, Gostinaya (Russia), Ulita (Russia), Promosaik(Germany), The Night Genre Project and Muddy Chevy; also turned into a YouTube video by Lillian Y. Wong. Keywords: survivors, victims, families, 911, 9/11, terrorist, attack, terrorism, empathy, sympathy, truth, horror, death, survive, survival
Jun 1, 2020
Jun 1, 2020 at 1:20 AM UTC
My moods swing.
Sharp left,
sharp right,
spinning,
spiraling.
This time has me losing my footing,
sinking,
floating off,
untethered.
Breathe.
Remember,
you can swim.
This is hard.
Some days,
I
try
to survive.
Other days,
I
am
drowning.
Breathe.
It will be okay,
again.
You will be okay,
again.
We will be okay,
again.
Remember,
you are a survivor.
We are survivors.
Apr 14, 2020
Apr 14, 2020 at 11:31 AM UTC
Salve
by Michael R. Burch
(for the victims and survivors of 9-11)
The world is unsalvageable ...
but as we lie here
in bed
stricken to the heart by love
despite war’s
flickering images,
sometimes we still touch,
laughing, amazed,
that our flesh
does not despair
of love
as we do,
that our bodies are wise
in ways we refuse
to comprehend,
still insisting we eat,
drink ...
even multiply.
And so we touch ...
touch, and only imagine
ourselves immune:
two among billions
in this night of wished-on stars,
caresses,
kisses,
and condolences.
We are not lovers of irony,
we
who imagine ourselves
beyond the redemption
of tears
because we have salvaged
so few
for ourselves ...
and so we laugh
at our predicament,
fumbling for the ointment.
Keywords/tags: 911, war, survival, survivors, recovery, love, ********** *** tears, redemption, bodies, flesh, touch, caresses
Apr 13, 2020
Apr 13, 2020 at 4:38 AM UTC
Break Time
by Michael R. Burch
for those who lost loved ones on 9-11
Intrude upon my grief; sit; take a spot
of milk to cloud the blackness that you feel;
add artificial sweeteners to conceal
the bitter aftertaste of loss. You’ll heal
if I do not. The coffee’s hot. You speak:
of bundt cakes, polls, the price of eggs. You glance
twice at your watch, cough, look at me askance.
The TV drones oeuvres of high romance
in syncopated lip-synch. Should I feel
the underbelly of Love’s warm Ideal,
its fuzzy-wuzzy tummy, and not reel
toward some dark conclusion? Disappear
to pale, dissolving atoms. Were you here?
I brush you off: like saccharine, like a tear.
Keywords/Tags: 911, victims, survivors, grief, loss, heal, healing, tear, tears, coffee, break, time, milk, artificial, sweeteners
Apr 2, 2020
Apr 2, 2020 at 3:20 AM UTC
Laughter’s Cry
by Michael R. Burch
(dedicated to the victims and survivors of the coronavirus)
Because life is a mystery, we laugh
and do not know the half.
Because death is a mystery, we cry
when one is gone, our numbering thrown awry.
Keywords/Tags: coronavirus, victims, survivors, life, death, laughter, cry, mystery, numbers, numbering, tears, crying, weeping, compassion, sympathy, empathy, recovery
Mar 25, 2020
Mar 25, 2020 at 1:32 AM UTC
Mending
by Michael R. Burch
I am besieged with kindnesses;
sometimes I laugh,
delighted for a moment,
then resume
the more seemly occupation of my craft.
I do not taste the candies;
the perfume
of roses is uplifted
in a draft
that vanishes into the ceiling’s fans
that spin like old propellers
till the room
is full of ghostly bits of yarn ...
My task
is not to knit,
but not to end too soon.
This is a poem for the survivors of 9–11 whose families lost loved ones in the terrorist attacks. Keywords: 911, survivors, victims, first, responders, passengers, firemen, police, heroes, terrorist, attacks, World Trade Center, Flight 93, Pentagon, White House
Mar 25, 2020
Mar 25, 2020 at 9:51 PM UTC
The sins of one man
Cannot be washed away
By old age or suffering
When his shadow
Has touched so many who
Will bear his mark for
The rest of their lives.
She says, "It is sad to see an old man in prison."
I tell her my sadness lays
On the banks of the river
Filled with the tears of his survivors.
Their pain cannot be abated by him
Contracting a virus.
Mar 22, 2020
Mar 22, 2020 at 9:49 PM UTC
Pfennig Postcard, Wrong Address
by Michael R. Burch
(for the victims and survivors of the Holocaust)
We saw their pictures:
tortured out of our imaginations
like golems.
We could not believe
in their frail extremities
or their gaunt faces,
pallid as our disbelief.
They are not
with us now ...
We have:
huddled them
into the backroomsofconscience,
consigned them
to the ovensofsilence,
buried them in the mass graves
of circumstancesbeyondourcontrol.
We have
so little left
of them
now
to remind us ...
It was my honor to work with survivors of the Holocaust as we translated their poems and prose accounts into English as a way of preserving them and making them available to larger audiences. Unfortunately, time waits for no one and the Holocaust survivors I worked with are no longer with us. But their words and testimonies remain, if we will only take the time to read and consider them. Keywords/Tags: Holocaust, victims, survivors, mass graves, pictures, images, tortured, frail, gaunt, skeletal, emaciated, thin, malnourished, golemic, horror, terror, inhumanity, madness, racism, antisemitism, slave labor, slavery, death camps, concentration camps, gas chambers, ethnic cleansing, genocide, memory, remembrance, memorial, tribute
Feb 29, 2020
Feb 29, 2020 at 4:16 AM UTC
Why does everyone tell
me to push on through?
That I'll make it?
That I am stronger than I think?
I know this.
I am a survivor.
But how long will that last
if I have no one to survive for?
They say the world is worth living,
but all the people who made it worth living
are gone.
So is it really?
There is pain, and death, and destruction
everywhere I look.
So who am I living for?
Those people?or myself?
I am not sure anymore
Dec 29, 2019
Dec 29, 2019 at 7:30 AM UTC
I am in this moment
I hear my breathing
I feel comfort
…...
I am in this moment
Old wounds daunt me
I am worrying about the future
All i know is uncertainty
…….
I am in this moment
I am enveloped in love
I am safe
…...
I am in this moment
I make my own choices
The past is no longer my burden
breathe
……
Let go.
Dec 10, 2019
Dec 10, 2019 at 6:59 PM UTC
This may be hard to hear and feels like i am stating a streotype comment
But for all those surviors of ****** abuse
I just want to let you know your not alone
I know everyday is a sturggle to get out of bed
Constent worrying and pain
And the questions that wont let go
You just want to end it all
You think its your fault and even if the world was telling you its not your sitting there thinking Oh my god please just shut up
I understand that but just know its okay not to be okay
And i know you feel ***** and you want to hurt yourself,blame yourself
And even if i tell you dont do it your letting the monster win
It makes no difference
So what i am going to say is hold on tight i know the journey is painful
But once you reach it will be raimbows
The nightmares the flashbacks i know its painful
I know it hurts more then anything
But i promise you that as long as your safe
No hands will ever touch you again
I know its hard and cry all you want
But once your finshed be sure to know that you can do it again whenever you want
Your not a victim you Are a survivor
But the truth is i will never know your pain
Nobody can ever guess what you might me going through
All you know is what your going through
But empathy is somthing that only works to an extent....
This is what i go through...
Sep 3, 2019
Sep 3, 2019 at 2:29 AM UTC
It has long been time to say goodnight,
The hands of the clock caressing my face, lulling me into secluded silence.
But I can still smell your skin on me, feel the bite of the binds.
And so the cigarette still burns. On. And on. And on. And the tears still fall. On. And on. And on.
Agony is telling the same story over and over until you believe it. "I'm fine, I don't think about it anymore. I'm over it."
And then you see something. Or hear something. Or read the ******* newspaper. And your name is never under arrest.
Maybe you never hurt anyone again. Maybe you only took my voice.
Maybe the cigarette still burns so close to my fingers that I have scars. Maybe I still wait for sleep. Maybe you'll catch fire to that bed dropping a cigarette. Maybe the flames will take you.
Maybe I can wait for the next time the pain will hit. Maybe I can smoke another cigarette.
Aug 29, 2019
Aug 29, 2019 at 9:46 PM UTC
The brave ones wield their mettle,
yet again not settling for defeat.
Retreat is not a choice!
Though their voices shake; they speak their truth.
Strong and weak.
Age and Youth.
Jun 17, 2019
Jun 17, 2019 at 9:37 AM UTC