Tag: Bittersweet

  • THE GARDEN PARTY CONTINUED

    Slow.

    Entangling.


    Rot wears the face of patience.
    Silence gathered like rust.
    Endurance cracked quietly.


    Decay entered silently and made itself a home.


    Dust fell into every sacred thing.
    The ashtray overflowed beside untouched flowers.


    The garden party continued.

  • BRIEF WARMTH, LONG ECHO.

    Just another season passing through 🖤
  • BIRTHDAYS

    Birthdays,
    rolling in faster every year,
    dragging their long shadows behind them.

    Something terrible
    always circles back.

    The innocence fled early,
    left me sleepless
    in a cold room of memories turned nightmares.

    I still hear younger laughter
    through half-lit hallways, like ghosts through another house—


    sugar-stained fingers, small hands,
    bright candles,
    warm lights in winter windows.
    The world untouched by dread.


    Time bruises in unknowing ways.

    Memory decays softly.

    Now I grow flowers alone,
    watering them with versions of myself I no longer recognize.

    No candles to burn.
    Only silence waiting in the walls.

    Getting older
    feels like watching winter
    move into the bones.

  • QUIET SURVIVAL

    I spent years
    waiting for grief
    to come roaring back through the door.

    Instead it learned to sit beside me.

    Never gone,
    only softer now,
    lingering like an old friend waiting across the table.

    The years no longer howl
    like they used to.

    Light returns slowly,
    through the kitchen windows,
    laying gold across unwashed dishes
    and half-watered plants.


    Half-warm coffee.
    Rain against the garden.
    The cat asleep nearby.
    My name resting safely in my own hands.

    The light asks nothing of me.

    There are still nights
    where memory returns like weather,
    slow thunder in the bones,
    old wounds opening their tired mouths—

    but it passes.

    I no longer confuse peace with emptiness.

    No one tells you,
    how strange it feels
    when your life finally stops hurting.


    How silence itself
    can make you weep.

    Some wounds never vanish.
    They simply loosen their grip.

    The world grows around it.


    Now the winters arrive gently.
    Not as punishment—
    just another season passing through.

  • BONES AND ASH


    I am made of bone
    and a restless mind.

    Coffee gone cold.
    Cigarette to ash.

    Watching the world
    pass
    without me.

    I got too good at goodbyes.

    Left pieces of myself
    in every one.

    Something in me
    didn’t survive them.

    Now I find my own way
    through what’s left of me.

  • We don’t see what’s waiting.

  • BUILT IN RUIN

    Holding roses,
    bleeding out on the floor—

    the witching hour waits,
    voices at the door.

    my love,
    built in ruin,

    wounded.

    there’s blood in the water—

    and still
    I ruin more.

  • MY GRIEF TAUGHT ME DISCIPLINE

    My grief taught me discipline.

    Not the clean, motivational kind—
    the quiet, brutal kind.
    that holds you together
    when everything you love comes undone.

    The discipline of surviving
    what should have broken you.

    Grief carved the truth in front of me—
    the pause before collapse.
    Tears taught me
    what words never could.

    My peace arrived—
    honest, not gentle.

    Now I honour the scars that taught me—
    the ones that closed without permission,
    that carried wisdom into my skin
    and proved I was worth healing.

    I let go of what no longer serves me.
    I stand in the truth of my heart
    and the marrow of my soul.

  • NOTHING LEAVES CLEAN

    I learned early—
    nothing leaves clean.

    Not grief.
    Not love.
    Not the versions of you
    you had to bury to survive.

    Fallen tears.
    Coffee stains.

    Sunlight
    cracks through the window—
    soft,
    but unforgiving.

    Heaven—
    a state of mind.
    Hell
    lives deep in the heart.

    Smoke without fire.
    Footsteps that don’t return.
    And something in you
    still counting the dead. 

  • THE WRATH OF THE BROKEN

    I carried the wrath of the broken.

    Or maybe—

    It carried me.

     

    Are we broken for the better,

    Or just addicted to the dark?

     

    A rose in the mud.

    Wrong side of midnight.

    Nothing grows here—

    It survives.

     

    Shadows of old friends

    Linger longer than they should.

     

    Laughter echoes—

    Warped now,

    Still sharp enough to cut.

     

    There is a stillness

    Between breaths.

     

    Not peace—

    Just pause.

     

    We reach for it anyway,

    Mistaking silence

    For healing.

     

    Trapped in the quiet unravelling,

    We miss the tremors

    Of collapse.

     

    No impact.

    No warning.

     

    Just the slow, sinking truth—

     

    We were never fighting anything else.

     

    We became

    The enemy

    We swore we’d never face.

     

  • FUEL

    Yesterday’s faults

    become tomorrow’s sorrows.

    In the dark corners of my mind

    I string stars like fairy lights.

    I take thunder in my chest

    and turn it to fuel—

    to light the fire within.

  • ON MY LAST BREATH

    On my last breath,
    I begged the night for a saviour—
    but the darkness stayed quiet.
    No one came.


    The cold laid the truth bare:
    in the chaos, in the ruins,
    no one is coming
    to pull you from your wreckage.


    Your salvation is yours.


    You save yourself—
    or don’t rise.

  • REVIVAL

    Regrowth is not gentle.
    I died at midnight—

    A slow bleed,
    crying spells,
    fractures beneath the surface.

    Learning to grow
    in the soil of last year’s failures—
    they are lessons,
    not a death sentence.

    I shed the stories that kept me small,
    shut the doors that fed the dark.
    I make peace with sunlight,
    and the quiet pull of moonlit nights.

    I embrace the changes—

    soft,
    loud,
    necessary.

    I hold the tender moments.

    I love—despite the madness.

    Revival.

  • You can’t outrun what lives in your bones
    – Jacqueline Lente Poetry