heartbreak
They can break your heart, but they can't break your soul; poetry about lost love that comforts and uplifts.
Hush
You tried to hush this fire asleep. With prophetic doom and abhorrent evil. I had to sever the anchor in order to regain control of my life. The horrors persist but so do I. You taught me pain even when I didn't ask for it. You prescribed sleep when I wanted to stay awake and alive. I watched your outer shell fall thick to the ground. Your cocoon erupted as you slithered out of your tunnel. Open wide the gates of misery and despair. As I jumped off the precipice to alleviate my impending demise. You orchestrated a hostile takeover amidst infinite warfare. You tore my soul into ruins because you never had one. You can't climb up out of purgatory with no one to receive you. These illusions gave rise to more useless grandeur. You can't take credit for what you didn't contribute to. I was always a universal force while you were a lesser wind. I was the host to your parasitic party. You hollowed my insides out completely at my expense. A symbiotic marriage where I lay comatose while you thrived. You were the tumor I repeatedly tried to cut out. Your brittle spirit refused to budge with no incentive. You were the toxin that refused to evacuate. Your silence spoke volumes for you instead. I learned to scream in foreign tongues to commemorate my freedom. You can abandon me in the abyss because it is safer without you. You can throw me into the void because I can navigate without you. Oblivion is better than visceral revulsion. I tried to stifle the magma but the lava wouldn't quit. The barriers you installed just couldn't contain the volcano in me. The myriad of passing years was a lesson in disguise. There was hope in unshaken reality in the shadow of disarray. I felt your coldness even in the ensuing furnace. You can melt in the face of adversity. I can manage in the aftermath of expulsion. I can create paradise in your wake. You tried to extinguish these explicit flames that offended you so much. You smothered and dowsed my plans in order to halt my progress. You destroyed yourself in an attempt to dismantle me. You have failed to hush this fire completely. It runs rampant while you waste water and energy trying to stifle it. This fire is not yours to control. It is not yours to subdue. I am not yours to govern and restrain anymore. This fire persists. My fire resists
By Anna Torresabout a year ago in Poets
Hope is the Thing with Feathers
Hope is the Thing with Feathers The morning came wrapped in ash and silence. The war had been over for three days, but no one in the village had dared to speak it aloud. Words, like laughter, felt too fragile to trust again. Little Amina stood barefoot on the cold stone steps of what used to be her home, staring at a single white feather caught in the twisted iron gate. It fluttered, stubborn and soft, refusing to fall. Like it belonged to another world. “Birds don’t come here anymore,” whispered her older brother Sami, emerging from behind a crumbled pillar. “They know better.” But Amina said nothing. She was six, with eyes far too old for her age. She gently reached out and plucked the feather. It was warm, impossibly. Like it had held sunlight in its threads. Inside the hollow skeleton of the house, their mother sat in the corner, wrapping potatoes in silence. The ceiling was gone, and the wind moved like a ghost through the walls. No one cried anymore. Grief had long since burned itself out. Amina walked over and placed the feather beside the broken lantern. “Where did you find it?” her mother asked, voice hoarse. “It found me,” Amina said simply. --- That night, the wind sang a different song. Not the sharp howls of memory. Not the sobbing of bent trees. But something gentler—like wings brushing against time. Sami, curious despite himself, peeked out the window. In the distance, on the old powerline, a small bird perched. A real one. With a rust-colored breast and a song that pierced the night. He gasped. “Mama, come see! A bird!” Amina sat up, eyes wide. “It came.” Her mother, disbelieving, walked slowly to the opening. There it was. A robin. Singing. As if it had been waiting for the war to end. The feather began to glow in the moonlight. --- Over the next days, the bird returned each morning. And with it, more feathers appeared. Tucked under stones, caught in windowsills, floating on the stream. White, brown, gray. Like messages from another world. Or perhaps reminders from this one. The villagers began to notice. Old Rehman, who hadn't spoken since his son died, came out with stale crumbs for the birds. Layla, the girl with one arm, laughed when a feather landed on her nose. Even the Imam, once stoic and withdrawn, began to repair the mosque's rooftop, whistling the bird’s tune under his breath. Hope had begun to roost again. --- Amina kept a small collection of feathers under her pillow. One night, as the stars bloomed across the sky, she whispered to them, “I know you’re listening. Thank you for coming back.” Her brother asked, “Do you think the bird understands us?” Amina nodded. “Birds understand everything. They know where the heart hides.” Sami looked at her for a long time. Then, without speaking, he placed his own feather—his only one—beside hers. It was the color of dusk. --- Years later, when the village was rebuilt and new children played in the schoolyard, the bird still returned. No one knew where it came from or where it went. But each time it arrived, it left behind a feather and a song. And whenever someone found a feather, they’d pause, smile, and place it on the shrine beside the old well, where names of the lost were carved in stone. They called it The Place Where Wings Remember. Amina, now grown, told the story to her daughter one evening as the bird flew overhead. “Hope,” she said, “is the thing with feathers. It doesn't ask. It just comes. Quietly. Softly. Even after everything.” Her daughter, wide-eyed, whispered, “Will it stay forever?” Amina smiled. “No. But it always returns.”
By Tariq Shahabout a year ago in Poets
Political Twenty-Two
Two by two once more, as former partners now learn a difficult dance. Crowding the Stage * Thank you for reading! If you liked this, you can add your Insights, Comment, leave a Heart, Tip, Pledge, or Subscribe. I will appreciate any support you have shown for my work.
By Kendall Defoe about a year ago in Poets
