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.
LOOK FOR
A horizon
that doesn’t fade
when you reach it.
A purpose
that survives the quiet.
A reason
not to burn it all down.
Something that holds
when you lean—
And doesn’t give.
SEARCH FOR
A place
where you don’t perform.
A landing
that doesn’t collapse.
A room inside you
that doesn’t echo.
A truth
that survives the storm—
Not gentle,
but still yours.
YEARN FOR
A home
that doesn’t bruise.
Warmth
that doesn’t leave.
Something
that doesn’t shrink you
or ask you to betray yourself.
Yearn for the self
that stops asking.
The one that stands—
Unflinching,
unchosen by fear.
The one that takes the throne
without apology—
After everything
it bled to keep.
Bring me back from the dead—
pull me under
with the weight of your sins.
I’ll tend to your wounds
and carry your name
long after—
it breaks me.
I want to know the truth of your soul,
Your strength, your story,
The fire that drives your heartbeat forward through the night.
I’m not afraid of the monsters you carry—
The rage born of old wounds, the scars,
The hurt forged in your bones.
I am no stranger to the dark underworld;
My monsters, my oldest companions—
Linger like background noise that refuses to die away.
But we are not our monsters;
We are what we create from the mess they leave behind.
Show me the artworks of your life.
Create some magic with me.
As thunder cracks and the heavens break
We are pulled back into each other’s storm,
Drawn by a tether neither of us can name.
Our cords run deep.
We search for the centre calm – the fragile quiet buried beneath all this noise.
For the home of belonging in each other’s heart.
Chaos surrounds us, chaos tests us,
Thunder pressing its questions hard against our ribs.
Yet in the wreckage, we reach for each other first.
Searching, finding each other
In the stars,
In the dark of the night,
In the rain and the cold,
And in the last flicker of the flame.
Always returning, always pulled back in.
Hold my hand and let it rain,
You are mine –
through every storm,
in every lifetime that finds us again.
I aimed for red—
sunset bleeding orange and fire,
a perfect contrast.
Then it changed.
Green.
I almost didn’t take the shot.
But I did.
And now I see more than I planned—
not colour,
but a path.
A horizon waiting.
We spend so long waiting for the perfect red,
the perfect moment,
the perfect sign—
but life doesn’t wait.
It turns green.
And every green light
leads to the horizon.
So go.
Let them be who they pretend to be,
and let them fall.
Leave them to their misery,
their hollow claims and borrowed skin.
Negativity, truth, and karma
will swallow them whole.
For they are their own demon,
their own slow demise.
True colours fracture through the mask,
the costume stained beyond repair.
They hate the mirror of their own heart,
so they hide inside a stranger’s face.
Affogato afternoons, where the day softens and the heart sharpens.
I sip the sweetness melting into the bitter, hoping it teaches me something honest.
I remember I’m allowed to slow down.
Some afternoons are a truce.
Others are a battlefield,
Where I sit across from myself, letting the espresso burn through the fog I thought I was done fighting.
But here – in this melting moment – I let it all blur.
The past I’m trying to outgrow, the future I’m not ready for, the voices that rise like steam and disappear just as fast.
Because in affogato afternoons, I learn the same truth over and over:
Even the bitter can soften. Even the frozen can give. And sometimes, the only way forward is to let yourself melt just enough to begin again.
I thought it would destroy me but I harvested from the loss.
Release, under a crimson red sky.
I craved crisp air for my lungs. I willed my cold dead heart back to life.
Not determined to live under the damage done, determined to rise up from it and rebuild again.
JACQUELINE LENTE POETRY
jacquelinelente.com 