the world’s got a habit
of chewing you up,
spitting you out
like a bad cigarette.
it doesn’t care
how many dreams you’ve got,
how many scars
you’ve earned.

people will smile at you,
talk about hope
like it’s something you can hold in your hands,
but they never mention
how it slips through your fingers
like sand
and disappears
before you can even grab it.

they tell you
there’s always a way out—
but you know better,
don’t you?
the exits are all locked
and the keys
are hidden in places
nobody bothers to look.

so you drink,
you smoke,
you **** up again and again,
and maybe you smile,
but it’s a lie,
a desperate lie,
just like everything else
they told you.

the truth?
the truth is,
no one’s coming to save you,
no one’s going to rewrite the rules,
no one’s going to put you back together
after you break.

you’ll just keep going,
because what else is there?
and the world will keep spinning,
chewing,
spitting,
until you’re nothing
but dust in its mouth.

As I stare upon the sea,
I see myself dancing
between the waves,
wishing I were free
from all this pain.

One tear drops,
adding mass to
the already disdained.

I can’t be certain
if it will be washed away,
for I’m controlled by pain—
the same way the moon controls
the way the sea sways.

I bleed out through my poetry.

Like little crime scenes
left behind after my
ex abused me.

The shards cuts deeper
because we loved so deeply
it soaked into the depths of
our beings until it became
a victim of lies of loves promises.

Love is not the perpetual blackness.

For it is the wilder of the sword
that cuts us deeper that
brought the perpetual blackness.

They are the damage and monster
that tries to eat what is left.

It is up to us to pickup the pen
and will ourselves above the ruins
and rebuild our lives to make room
for new relationships that grow into
possibilities for future love.

This too shall pass,
like the day into night,
rain into clear skies,
and tear soaked pillows
into fresh clean linens.

I wash my hands from my pain
by writing poetry.

©️ 2025 By Amanda Shelton