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.
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.
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.
The will to go on
slowly fades.
Trapped inside your body.
The void deepens—
obsidian.
Demons closing in,
tasting the win.
And you—
blade in hand—
turn inward.
I stayed standing
Not steady—
Just enough
to pass as strength.
Bending quietly.
Hands shaking.
Mind slipping—
just enough to lose hold.
No one noticed
how close I was.
I take my intrusive thoughts
out for walks—
like they belong to me.
They don’t leave.
They don’t quiet.
I try to sleep them off,
but they follow me there too.
Every night,
the same loop—
no exit.
I remember every word
that cut me open.
I remember every fire
that left more
than it burned.
I remember the void
that kept growing
until there was nothing else.
I remember the storm
that almost took me—
almost.
I remember every hit,
every mark.
every scar—
inside
and out.
In my trenches–
this haunted house
eats me whole.
Ghosts of memory
wander.
Whispers in the walls.
My mind—
a forbidden dungeon
no one enters.
Something inside
won’t stay still.
Dead eyes.
On the floor again.
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.
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.
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.
jacquelinelente.com 