I wrote this playful poem while building and staining my backyard fence.

A DIY project that took months longer than I anticipated.

Spring in Texas brought so many rainy nights that the wood and ground stayed soaked. Sometimes, I had to wait days before I could continue staining.

And when the weather finally cooperated, there I was again, working on my little backyard project.

One evening, I sat outside at my tiny table with a cup of coffee and a little bourbon.

For whatever reason, I suddenly felt the urge to paint my nails.

Deep purple.

With glitter, of course.

Because apparently, building a fence wasn’t enough of a project for one evening.

As I sat there, admiring my freshly painted nails, I looked toward the gray borders and deep red stain of my fence.

And I smiled.

There was something about that ordinary moment that made me feel incredibly grateful.

I had a home of my own.

A backyard.

A fence I was slowly transforming with my own hands.

Growing up, my family lived in apartments. Later, during high school, we lived in a little shack behind my grandparents’ house.

It wasn’t much.

One bedroom, a small kitchen, a bathroom, and a living room shared by four people.

We made do with what we had.

There were difficult years, but there were also movie nights, sports, laughter, and those ordinary family moments that somehow made a small space feel bigger.

Now, years later, I was sitting in my own backyard, painting my nails while waiting for wood stain to dry.

How funny life can be.

We spend so much time thinking about the big things we want to accomplish that sometimes we overlook the small moments that remind us how far we’ve come.

That evening, I wasn’t thinking about having the perfect house.

The fence wasn’t even finished.

My nails were probably going to get ruined the next time I picked up a paintbrush.

But I was happy.

Happy to have a place to call home.

Happy to create something with my own hands.

And grateful for the little pleasures that make an ordinary evening feel special.

Somewhere between the rain-soaked wood, the deep red stain, and the glitter on my purple nails, a poem began to form.

A playful little reminder that gratitude doesn’t always arrive through grand accomplishments.

Sometimes, it arrives while sitting at a tiny table, sipping coffee with a little bourbon, admiring your unfinished fence.

And realizing that life, even in its simplest moments, can be rather beautiful.

Playful with sparkles,💖

Blynnwrites

Writer of quiet truths and emotional depth

Beauty shaped through broken things

Poem #11 — The Story Behind the Poem

When I wrote this poem, I was sitting outside, looking at my backyard back in April.

I had just finished a conversation with a few family members about young lives lost to suicide.

Lives gone too soon, friends family and loves.

So many stories came forth from different perspectives, a son and friend lost his life because his older brother said simply he didn’t approve the gay life, not knowing his little brother was gay. Rejection and suicide a best friend lost his life from obscured name calling and disconnection from family in front of little brother.

Someone shared the story of a young woman whose relationship with her boyfriend had faced disapproval from their families. A Black girl and a Mexican boy.

Two young people whose relationship had become complicated by circumstances surrounding them, both gone.

I also heard the story of another young man whose relationship with his mother had become increasingly troubled.

There were arguments, difficulties at home, and repeated attempts to run away. Eventually, he disappeared. For several days, no one knew where he was.

Then came the devastating news. His death had been determined to be a suicide. I knew this boy once.

I remember getting so angry with him because he left a piece of hard candy in the handle of my truck. It melted. The sticky mess took me forever to clean.

I remember how frustrated I was, trying to get every bit of that stickiness out.

Such an ordinary memory. Something so insignificant that I never imagined I would remember it years later.

Yet here I am, thinking about a boy who once annoyed me over melted candy.

And now he’s gone.

How quickly lives can change.

My scientific mind began questioning what I had heard.

I researched the schools, demograghics and ideals suicide has been accompanied, and came across information that made me concerned about the number of students suicides based on bullying, home and school.

My algorithms on different platforms flooded with different forms of grieving, I wondered whether there was a pattern.

What was happening to these young people?

Were there circumstances contributing to their suffering? Were there warning signs that people had overlooked? I wanted to understand. But somewhere along the way, I lost track of my research.

I was dealing with my own emotional struggles and the expectations I had placed upon myself to help someone I loved struggling with their own suicide intentions. Action plans and reinforcements to help demise those attempts have helped for years, yet sometimes intense.

So I put the research on the back burner. Along with my other unfinished projects. Like I so often do.

Another question left unanswered. Another subject I wanted to investigate.

And another reminder that no matter how much I want to understand the world, there will always be things I cannot explain or help collect all the answers.

The Memories We Carry

As I sat outside, my thoughts began wandering toward my childhood.

The things I had already shared throughout this poetry series.

And the things I still couldn’t bring myself to write about.

I grew up in a household where severe mental health struggles affected our family.

My father is a Marine. Once a Marine, always a Marine. If you are apart of a military household you know the struggles.

Although he is my stepfather, he is the man who raised my brother and me.

I watched drugs affect a man I called Daddy.

I watched my mother struggle to hold our household together while fighting her own demons.

I witnessed anger take over situations that should never have become frightening.

My father’s approach to raising children sometimes resembled a drill sergeant training soldiers.

Push-ups. Sit-ups. Physical discipline.

And when my brother and I lied because we were trying to protect ourselves, the consequences could become more severe. Belts. Paddles. sometimes his hand and knuckles.

These punishments that left scars from some of the things we experienced as children.

I remember how my brother would sometimes take the blame so I wouldn’t be the one getting hit or disciplined.

He protected me through many of our father’s fits of rage. Even when doing so meant facing the consequences himself.

There were times when we hated the person our father had become.

And yet, he was still the man who raised us, loved us and protected us.

How strange it is to grow older and begin understanding that love and fear can exist within the same memories.

That someone can be part of your happiest moments and some of your most frightening ones. You can acknowledge the pain someone caused without denying the love you once felt.

Even today, my Marine dad holds diagnoses whose mental health remains complex, involving PTSD, difficulties with impulse control, depression, and struggles surrounding suicide.

But that is another story.

One I may tell another day.

For now, I return to the memories that brought me to this poem.

The Things I Cannot Yet Speak About

As my thoughts continued wandering, I remembered someone from my past.

Someone I had recently found the courage to see again.

There were things I wanted to understand.

Questions I had carried for years, needed answers.

But when I finally asked about something I remembered, I was told:

That’s not correct.

It never happened like that.

And suddenly, I began questioning myself.

Had I remembered incorrectly?

Was I being manipulated again?

At the time of those experiences, I had been taking medication for pain due to my illness, and I knew there were moments when I struggled to remember clearly.

But I also remembered how frightened I had felt.

There were songs, messages, and accusations that made me question whether I had caused insurmountable pain to someone I had once tried so desperately to help, loved us and be able to always keep them around in my life.

And somewhere between the memories and the uncertainty, I became overwhelmed.

There are things I cannot yet speak about.

Things I cannot bring myself to write.

Perhaps one day I will.

But not today.

I remember crying in the shower until I fell down.

I asked the Lord to make the memories stop.

But they kept coming.

I couldn’t catch my breath.

I hadn’t cried that hard in years, not since my grandpa.

And when the tears finally slowed, my rational mind began reorganizing itself.

I’m fine.

I’ll always be fine.

You’ve lived through worse.

This is just another day.

This is what needed to happen.

My eyes were puffy.

My heart still hurt.

But my thoughts began becoming clearer.

The memories slowly receded.

Music continued playing, yet I sat alone in a moment of silence.

I breathed with relief.

For a brief moment, I felt as though nothing could touch me.

It was almost like a cleansing.

Not because everything had disappeared.

But because I had finally allowed myself to feel something I had spent years trying to contain.

And for once, I didn’t feel the immediate need to explain it.

The Weight of Trying to Understand Everyone

Then came another phone call.

Another message.

And I recognized the emotional cycle I feared returning to.

The blame.

The guilt.

The misunderstandings.

The expectation that I needed to save someone.

I began thinking about how much of my life I had spent trying to understand the suffering of others.

Trying to help.

Trying to find solutions.

Trying to make sense of people’s behavior.

And sometimes accepting responsibilities that were never entirely mine to carry.

But what happens when you spend so much time trying to understand everyone else that you forget to listen to yourself?

I was tired.

Not of caring.

But of believing that caring meant I had to carry everything.

So I stepped back.

I fasted.

I prayed.

And I began accepting something that had taken me years to understand.

I cannot save everyone.

I can love someone.

I can wish them peace.

I can hope they find the strength to seek help.

But I cannot control the decisions they make.

And I cannot spend my life believing that every painful outcome is mine to prevent.

Have you ever sat in front of someone who frightened you because of things that happened in your past?

I have.

And I know how difficult it can be to separate the person you once loved from the memories you still carry.

But I began realizing that I didn’t need to keep returning to the same questions.

I didn’t need another conversation that left me doubting myself.

I didn’t need to keep explaining why something had hurt me.

And I didn’t need to accept every burden simply because someone placed it before me.

I could care without carrying everything.

I could remember without returning.

And I could leave certain questions unanswered without allowing them to consume me.

Equanimity — When the Questions Become Quiet

There is a word I have come to appreciate.

Equanimity.

It describes a state of mental calmness and balance, especially when facing difficult emotions, uncertainty, or circumstances beyond our control.

It doesn’t mean forgetting and It doesn’t mean becoming indifferent.

Most importantly it certainly doesn’t mean that everything we have experienced suddenly makes sense.

It means learning to remain steady even when life refuses to give us the answers we seek and I think that is what I have slowly begun discovering.

Because the need I once carried no longer consumes me the way it used to. It no longer plagues my every waking moment.

The memories are still there, the questions still exist and resurface, but something within me has grown quieter.

It’s muted now, it’s asking, not demanding me.

For years, my thoughts demanded answers, demanded that I understand, or I remember every encounter.

That I fix what had gone wrong and find a reason for everything.

But now…

The questions can exist without requiring an immediate response and I can acknowledge uncertainty without feeling obligated to solve it.

I can remember the past without surrendering my present to it.

And I can recognize another person’s suffering without believing I must become the solution.

That is what peace has begun to look like for me.

Not the absence of pain and Not the disappearance of those memories. But the ability to sit with them without losing myself.

A quietness within the complexity of being simply human.

Why I Wrote Complexity

When I wrote this poem, I was questioning the meaning of life, from an outsider, a bystander, a third party and for myself. The questions came;

Why am I here?

What is my purpose?

Why do we carry memories that follow us through different stages of our lives?

Why can we love someone and still fear them?

Why do we sometimes feel responsible for the suffering of people we once loved?

And why do we expect ourselves to understand things that may never have a simple explanation?

I don’t have those answers and probably I never will.

But I’m beginning to understand that life cannot always be divided into right and wrong, happiness and sadness, love and loss.

Sometimes those experiences exist together and we love people who have hurt us. Often time we question memories we thought we understood. Simply just to want to help someone who doesn’t know how to accept our help.

Yet, we have to face the facts that another person’s journey is not ours to control.

I don’t need every memory to make sense and I don’t need every person to understand me.

And I don’t need to carry the weight of every unanswered question.

The questions may come but they do not control me, they can ask, and I can choose when, or whether, to answer.

I am not entirely whole.

But I am not entirely broken.

I am complex.

And despite everything I have experienced, everything I remember, and everything I have yet to understand, I know one thing.

I am worthy of life itself.

So, this poem is dedicated to the people who have felt the same and need reassurance that life is still worth living.

If no one has told you today they love you.

I love you, for you simply living.

I hope strength and peace find the souls who are tormented by their pasts.

May they discover moments of quiet within the noise of their memories.

May they find the courage to seek help when life becomes overwhelming.

And may they come to understand that their existence has value, even when they cannot see the purpose of it.

With love and light passing through,

From me to you.

~Blynnwrites
Writer of quiet truths and emotional depth

Beauty shaped through broken things

Above my office desk sits my college degree.

I remember looking at it one day and thinking how heartbreaking it was that something I had worked so hard for could hang there, and yet I felt as though I had nothing to show for it.

I told myself this path was worth it.

But somewhere along the way, I stopped knowing what I enjoyed anymore.

It was a hollow feeling, almost as though I didn’t belong in this timeline.

When I was little, I always wanted to go to college. I dreamed about it, even when I thought I would never have the opportunity.

I would tell people I wanted to go to medical school.

I wanted to become a physician.

I imagined the white coat resting upon my shoulders, my name embroidered across the fabric, the sound of my heels against the floor as I walked toward patients who needed me.

I imagined myself becoming someone knowledgeable, compassionate, and capable of making a difference in people’s lives.

And perhaps, more than anything, I imagined the feeling of finally making it.

But life has a strange way of changing the roads we believe we are meant to travel.

The Road I Thought I Knew

During my pre-med journey, things became increasingly difficult.

Biology, chemistry, calculus, and all the other courses began challenging me in ways I hadn’t anticipated.

I was overwhelmed.

I watched other students volunteer, participate in extracurricular activities, travel, gain experience, and build impressive academic records.

Meanwhile, I was trying to balance my education with everything happening inside my family.

I began wondering whether the things I was doing would ever amount to anything compared with the accomplishments of others.

Would anyone recognize the responsibilities I carried outside the classroom?

Would the time I spent helping my family ever mean something to the institutions I hoped would accept me?

Or would I simply be another applicant who hadn’t done enough?

I asked myself constantly:

Are you worthy?

Can you handle the pressure?

Are you capable of becoming the person you said you wanted to be?

Those questions followed me from one class to another.

One semester to the next.

Until eventually, graduation arrived.

And somehow, even after earning my degrees, the questions never entirely disappeared.

The People Behind My Education

There is something people don’t always see when they look at someone’s academic achievements.

They see the degree.

They see the institution.

They see the courses completed.

Perhaps they see the GPA.

But they don’t always see the life happening behind those numbers.

During high school, I witnessed the realities of nursing homes. I volunteered at a VA hospital, and throughout my life, I experienced illness and the responsibilities of caring for people firsthand.

I became someone my family could turn to for guidance, solutions, and presence.

I helped where I could.

I listened.

I watched.

I learned.

And sometimes, I stood beside people I loved while their health slowly deteriorated.

Day by day.

Week by week.

Until eventually, they were no longer here.

I remember struggling through courses while trying to understand what was happening to the people around me.

There were tests I knew I had failed.

There were moments when I couldn’t concentrate, when the information wouldn’t stay in my mind, and when I felt emotionally exhausted before I even opened another textbook.

And there were funerals to help arrange.

Sometimes after an examination I already knew hadn’t gone well.

One moment, I was sitting in a classroom trying to remember everything I had studied.

The next, I was facing the reality that someone I loved would never come home again.

Then they were six feet under.

Gone.

One by one, I lost my grandparents and my beloved dogs.

And life continued.

The assignments were still due.

The next examination was still coming.

The world didn’t stop because mine had changed.

I don’t say these things because I want sympathy.

I say them because they were part of my education, too.

There are lessons you learn inside a classroom.

And there are lessons life teaches you without asking whether you’re ready.

I was learning both at once.

The Student I Compared Myself To

I remember meeting a man in one of my courses.

He spoke highly of himself, his girlfriend, and the future he imagined.

He wanted to become a doctor.

And boy, was he knowledgeable.

I admired how confidently he spoke about the things he had learned.

He told me about traveling to India during high school and showed me photographs of the experiences he had witnessed there.

I remember listening to him and thinking:

Look at him.

He’s going to become a doctor.

Then I looked at myself.

I thought about how difficult it was for me to retain information sometimes.

How I could study something, understand it, and later struggle to remember it.

How easily he seemed to absorb knowledge while I felt as though I was constantly fighting to hold on to mine.

And I told myself something rather cruel.

You’re just someone with a dream that’s too difficult to make come true.

I began losing the encouragement I once had.

The excitement.

The love of learning that had made me want to pursue medicine in the first place.

I was ashamed of my GPA.

There were courses I knew I could have performed better in, but I was tired, confused, and emotionally drained.

Sometimes I gave in.

Not because I stopped caring about my education, but because I was struggling to carry everything at once.

And instead of recognizing that, I compared myself to people whose lives I didn’t fully know.

I saw their achievements.

I saw my shortcomings.

And I forgot to recognize my own experiences.

The Shame of Something I Love

Today, I am proud of my education.

Biology and health sciences are fields I genuinely love.

They have given me an appreciation for the human body, for knowledge, for the complexity of life, and for the things we are still discovering.

I love learning.

I love understanding how things work.

And there is something extraordinary about knowing that the world contains more information than any one person could ever completely understand.

Yet, when I look at my degree, I sometimes feel shame.

Something I know I shouldn’t have to feel.

I thought the road would be easier.

I thought the sacrifices would eventually lead me to the future I had imagined.

I thought that once I graduated, I would feel accomplished.

Instead, I sometimes found myself asking:

What now?

What have I done with this?

Will I ever amount to what I was meant to become?

And perhaps the most difficult question:

Why can’t I see my accomplishments the way other people see them?

I can celebrate someone else’s graduation.

I can admire their intelligence, dedication, and perseverance.

But when I look at my own achievements, I begin searching for everything I haven’t done.

It’s a strange way to treat something I worked so hard to earn.

The White Coat I Still Imagine

I still think about becoming a physician.

Sometimes I picture that white coat.

My name embroidered upon it.

My heels against the hospital floor.

Patients waiting for me.

A life dedicated to medicine.

There is a part of me that mourns the fact that I am not already living that dream.

But then another part of me wonders whether I still want the life that comes with it.

The long hours.

The years of training.

The responsibility.

The possibility of spending so much of my life working that I have little time left for myself.

I think about my own physical limitations.

My back.

My stomach.

My weight.

The days when I feel emotionally detached or exhausted.

And sometimes I use those things as reasons to tell myself I am no longer enough for the profession.

But perhaps I need to stop calling every concern an excuse.

Perhaps some of those concerns are simply part of understanding the life I can realistically sustain.

I have already spent so many years caring for others.

I know what it means to witness suffering.

I know what it feels like to be needed when you’re tired yourself.

And I know how easily a person can forget to care for themselves while trying to be present for everyone else.

Maybe I am not only mourning the dream of becoming a doctor.

Maybe I am mourning the version of myself I believed I would already be.

The woman in the white coat.

The woman who had made it.

The woman who could look at every hardship and say:

It was worth it.

But what if the life I imagined as a child is no longer the life I want as an adult?

Does that mean I failed her?

Or does it mean I have changed?

I don’t have a complete answer.

And perhaps that’s okay.

What My Degree Still Holds

When I wrote My Timeless Degree, I was looking at that framed accomplishment and wondering what I could do to feel proud of it the way other people seemed to be.

I began questioning whether it was still worthy of my memories.

And then I found myself asking something entirely different.

Or am I still trying to be worthy of you?

I think that is what hurts the most.

Somewhere along the way, I began treating my degree as though it were waiting for me to prove that I deserved it.

As though graduation wasn’t enough.

As though every sacrifice needed to produce something greater before I could finally be proud.

But when I think about everything that happened during those years, I realize that degree holds far more than academic knowledge.

It holds life.

Love.

Sacrifice.

Grief.

Resilience.

Courage.

And longing.

It holds memories of the people I loved.

The people I cared for.

The people who are no longer here to see what I have become.

It holds the little girl who dreamed of attending college, even when she didn’t know whether she would ever have the chance.

And it holds the woman who eventually did.

I wish I could tell that younger version of myself that everything would turn out exactly as she imagined.

But I can’t.

Life didn’t happen that way.

And although I sometimes wish things had been different, I also recognize that my journey allowed me to be present for people who needed me.

That doesn’t mean every hardship was necessary.

It doesn’t mean I wouldn’t change certain things if I could.

It simply means that love and sacrifice became part of my journey, whether I expected them to or not.

I wanted to become a physician because I wanted to help people.

And while I was pursuing that dream, I was already helping people in the ways I could.

Maybe I need to give myself credit for that.

A Timeless Question

I don’t know exactly where my education will take me next.

Perhaps I will continue toward a different profession.

Perhaps I will return to something I once dreamed of.

Perhaps I will discover an entirely new passion that I haven’t considered yet.

I still love medicine.

I still love knowledge.

And I still have dreams that I am not ready to surrender.

But I am beginning to wonder whether I have spent so many years trying to become worthy of my degree that I forgot to ask whether the life I imagined is still right for the person I have become.

I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking at something I earned and feeling ashamed because it didn’t lead me exactly where I expected.

I want to remember the girl who thought college might never be possible.

The student who struggled through exams.

The caregiver who carried grief into classrooms.

The woman who graduated anyway.

And the person who is still learning what she wants from life.

Perhaps my degree isn’t asking me to prove anything.

Perhaps I am the one who keeps asking it questions.

And maybe, one day, I will look above my office desk and see something other than an unfinished dream.

Maybe I will see a life that was happening all along.

A life that still has room to become something different.

My degree may be timeless, but I am still trying along with my failures.

Always and forever,

~Blynnwrites

Where do I begin?

Late one night, I had a heated conversation with someone I love.

They expressed immense concern about me and my timeline, almost as if I had never done anything with my life. There was this feeling that my heart had been open to everyone except them. It’s rather strange how cruel the tongue can become when speaking to someone we love.

That same night, I wrote in my diary about someone I had missed for years. I found myself wishing for some kind of connection, while also wondering whether it was finally time to leave the past alone. To forget the impression left along my heart.

Eventually, I needed a break from my own thoughts. So naturally, I went on TikTok. And guess what I found?

A new composer expressing himself in the most intimate and gorgeous way.

His art. His joy. His way of being. His way of loving life through a collection of notes.

He asked for something so simple:

He asked for the consumers to listen and feel what this song makes you feel, to leave a comment. His fear of being uncertain that his music isn’t cut out like Beethoven, Mozart, Hans Zimmerman, Andrew Loyd Webber and all the other amazing composers. So, I stayed and I listened, like my life depended on it.

I listened because it opened something that i think we all can relate to, the want and need to be seen.

So I stayed. And I listened. I listened like my life depended on it.

I sat there without distractions. No checking how long the song had left. No scrolling. No looking away.

Just me and him.

Me listening to the passion his soul seemed to speak through those strings, alongside all the other people who had chosen to stop and listen too. And it opened a wound inside me. Not necessarily a painful one. More like a longing.

I wanted to be seen like that. I wanted to find my craft.

My light.

My unique something.

Or, as Happy Feet would say, I wanted to find my “umph.”

For those few minutes, I felt peaceful.

Life became quiet.

Success, Career, Bills, Love, Heartache, Existing.

Everything weighing on me seemed to disappear for a moment. I just wanted to be present for someone else. And boy, am I glad I stopped on his page. When the video ended, I went to the comments almost on impulse. I couldn’t contain my fingers.

I started typing. The words began flowing like a river breaking through a dam.

Then I stopped.

I stared at what I had written. It was a poem.

My first poem.

This is that poem.

It has been tweaked throughout the few months i have been writing, and I’ll leave the original draft at the bottom for you to read. Let me know which one you like more: the refined version or the original.

My favorite is still the original. Because that version flowed without a care in the world.

No fear. No pressure. No wondering whether I was good enough.

It simply came out of me. Now, did I actually send it in his comments?

No.

I didn’t. I copied the poem, deleted the original comment, and replaced it with something much safer and more generic about how much his music moved me.

And honestly, I still feel a little bad about that. He had been so genuine. He asked for vulnerability. And for a brief moment, I had given him mine.

Then I became afraid. I worried I would look like a joke. I worried people would mock me. I worried I had written too much when maybe I was only supposed to say something simple.

My brain defeated me in the exact moment I wanted to simply exist and let someone know what their words, passion, love of art, and craft had awakened inside someone who was hurting and lonely.

So, to my new favorite composer:

Thank you.

Because whether you know it or not, you awakened a writer. A passionate person trying to express herself during a time when she was walking a narrow road through uncertainty. For those few minutes, I chose to listen. I chose to exist beside your art. And something inside me changed.

Where the Poem Took Me

The poem itself was also shaped by another memory. I was thinking about a friend finding love near a tunnel outside of Oregon.

Years ago, while traveling, I met many people, but I’ll never forget the feeling of watching someone meet another person and begin falling in love. It felt almost like tunnel vision. Everything else disappeared.

There was something so intimate about watching a connection form naturally in front of me. That memory became tangled with the environment around it.

Have you ever hiked somewhere and suddenly felt completely at peace with the nature surrounding you?

It settles inside your chest like you can finally breathe. The air feels cleaner. There’s less pollution. Sometimes there’s salt in the air.

The breeze feels so fresh that you almost hate the smell of perfume disturbing it. And believe me, I love perfume. But some places feel so majestic that manufactured scents almost seem wrong there.

You want the earth exactly as it is.

The soil. The trees. The water. The breeze.

The movement of life around you. There is something mechanical and magical about it all at once. Every step. Every molecule existing in space.

Light breaking into fragments through trees. Tiny insects moving without a care. Birds, mammals, and creatures standing their ground instead of scattering away.

Almost as if they are looking at you and saying:

This is my territory.

I live here.

You’re the guest.

Get out of my house.

And somehow, all of those things became tangled together in my mind. A heated conversation. An old love. A stranger’s music. A poem I was too afraid to share. A tunnel.

Oregon, Nature, Connection, Loneliness, Hope, And creativity.

That’s how this poem wrangled itself into existence. It became a mixture of everything I was feeling and everything I had remembered in that moment.

Sometimes creativity doesn’t arrive neatly. Sometimes it crashes through several memories at once and demands to be made into something. That night, I thought I was simply listening to someone play music.

The original poem:::

inspiration from Lake Song by Michael Kim Sheng

Sadness falls,

We turn and fall in hopeless love,

leading into a tunnel where we will

never know.

I seem to have forgotten if I’ve known you,

but you are special and captivating in the light.

Can you see me, can you touch me, can you love me?

Will you calm me and let me know I’m yours?

For I am ultimately content knowing I am alone within me,

But I fall in hope.

Someday soon I will be.

Instead, I discovered another part of myself.

The writer.

And maybe that’s one of the most beautiful things about art.

We create because something inside us needs to speak.

And we never really know what our art might awaken inside someone else.

~Blynnwrites

~Blynnwrites

The way we move together—
the feeling of your first entry,
the gasp of surrender
falling from somewhere beyond my body.

The growls of ecstasy
made between you and me.

Cream turned milky,
our bodies shifting and turning,
trying to become closer
close enough for you
to love me more deeply
than anything I have ever known.

The fantasy has awakened
the beast within me.

I long for a touch
that does not burn me—
the gentleness and harshness
of being claimed by you.

The way you walk fascinates me:
standing so tall, looking down at me,
as if to clean the beautiful mess
we have made
inside my mind
once again.

A intimate question::

What happens when the person everyone depends upon becomes tired, too?

The Story Behind the Poem

There always comes a time when people feel drained by their lives.

Maybe you find yourself walking around one day asking, Why am I here? What is my purpose? Or maybe you simply wish something—anything—could be different.

That is where this poem comes from.

While talking to a few people, I began noticing a pattern hidden within the things they said.

One phrase appeared frequently:

“I’m tired.”

Almost as if those two words could explain everything they were feeling.

Mine has always been:

“I’m fine.” Or “I’m okay.”

Even when I’m not.

Human beings have a tendency to push beyond their limits every day, even when nothing around them changes. A partner forgives something you’ve done. You promise to change, yet eventually the same patterns return.

Here is an aching little truth about relationships:

Sometimes they suck.

And yet they can be wonderful things to be apart of.

You become comfortable with another person. Life fills with responsibilities, work, bills, family, thoughts, worries, and everything else demanding your attention. By the time intimacy arrives—physical, mental, or emotional—you may have nothing left to give.

You’re drained.

I’ve felt drained for years.

People have told me:

You have such a bubbly personality.

You make everything brighter.

Your smile changes the room.

Sometimes I wonder how that can possibly be true when, internally, I feel as though darkness is consuming my energy.

I’ve always been sensitive to the emotions around me.

An argument.

Love.

Passion.

Joy.

I feel them.

I also notice tension—the strange atmosphere created when people try too hard to like one another, impress one another, or simply remain around each other.

It can be complicated and, sometimes, exhausting to witness.

I’ve cared for family, friends, and people who needed assistance throughout their lives.

But when it comes to me, sometimes I feel as though I’m viewed as both the problem and the solution at the same time.

I’ve asked myself countless times:

Why do you stay?

Why do you endure?

Why don’t you say no?

Maybe because some stubborn part of my heart and mind continues believing in love and light—even when surrounded by darkness.

The Dream

Once, I had a horrifying dream that ended so magnificently that it somehow put my mind at ease before I woke.

I walked through a doorway into complete absence.

No sound.

Nothing around me.

No light.

The farther I walked, the more I began hearing growls and screams—the kinds of sounds horror movies give to hell, demons, spirits, and things we’re supposed to fear.

I became terrified.

I turned around.

The entrance was gone.

The beings surrounded me. They scratched at my flesh. Somehow everything became hot and cold simultaneously.

I ran.

I just wanted to get away.

Then I remembered something incredibly important.

Something simple.

I am a child of God.

So why was I afraid?

Why was I running?

A spark emerged from my chest.

Light began glowing within me like a halo.

I looked into the eyes of one of the creatures. Its expression changed. The determination I had seen—the hunger to tear me apart—became uncertainty.

Then fear.

I slowly turned around.

Inch by inch, the hands and paws gripping my body began pulling away.

Whispers echoed around me:

We can’t touch her.

She remembers.

What do we do?

Grab her.

Voices overlapped from every direction.

Something reached toward me.

But the brilliant light surrounding me swallowed me whole, and the hand reaching toward me burned away.

The screaming began again.

Only this time, I wasn’t afraid.

Instead of running toward the exit, I walked.

I walked with confidence.

With determination.

With love.

With protection.

And then I heard a voice, perfectly clear:

“Well done, my daughter. I’m always walking beside you.”

Then I woke.

What the Dream Left Behind

That dream came to me during a period when I was writing these poems and feeling deeply discouraged.

I was in a place where I couldn’t imagine what the next point of my life would look like.

For so long, I have wanted the successful life I’ve imagined. I’ve wanted to walk among people and feel proud of what I’ve accomplished.

Yet somehow, even after countless opportunities to look at myself and say, You did something worth being proud of, another voice answers:

It’s not enough.

My story has inspired a few people. Some have told me:

You should write a book.

And still, self-doubt and fear have eaten at my heart until I’ve felt drained in ways I couldn’t always explain.

Everyone seems to have an answer for what you’re supposed to do with your life.

Find financial independence.

Find freedom.

Get any job.

Lose weight.

You’ll figure it out.

That loss was meant to happen.

You weren’t meant for that road.

Since I was a little girl, I’ve dreamed about living somewhere different and creating another kind of life for myself. That fantasy has walked beside me for years, continuously placed on hold until hope slowly developed another companion:

Fear.

Will you survive again?

That is another story, for a later time.

The Other Truth Behind This Poem

This poem isn’t only about caring for everyone else.

I’m calling myself out, too.

Through years of physical pain and witnessing the progression of illness in people I cared about, I began carrying a terrible belief:

Maybe I’m bad luck.

Maybe I’m poison.

I would care for someone, try to help them however I could, and sometimes they would still decline.

Sometimes they would die.

And afterward, my mind would whisper:

You could have done more.

You could have done better.

Maybe they’d still be here.

Intellectually, I understand that someone’s diagnosis, disease, or condition was never something I could control through love or caregiving.

Emotion doesn’t always obey intellect.

I’ve tortured myself with those questions countless times.

Sometimes memories and images return, and I have to stop.

Exhale.

And remind myself:

Some things were outside your control.

Stop draining yourself trying to rewrite what you could never control.

I’m still learning that.

I am still learning to love people more and stepping away to breathe too.

I’m also learning to love myself a little more every day and extend some of the same grace toward myself that I have spent years giving everyone else.

Because I have walked that narrow path of allowing other people’s darkness to consume me while simultaneously trying to manage my own.

And there is an honest truth underneath all of this:

I have spent years following the rules and trying to make sure my family felt comfortable and safe.

Sometimes I forgot that I was allowed to feel safe, too.

For Those Who Care

This poem is for the caregivers.

The healthcare professionals.

The emergency responders.

The friends.

The families.

The sons and daughters.

The mothers and fathers.

The people who have walked narrow roads beside someone they love while quietly wishing they could stop for just a moment and breathe.

Wanting rest doesn’t mean you stopped loving them.

Being tired doesn’t mean you failed them.

Sometimes we have to learn to say yes to ourselves for a moment so that our hearts have enough room to open again.

I understand you. And I love you anyway.

So please—

learn to love yourself the way you love others, too.

Strength isn’t found standing beside the bed.

Maybe it’s found across the other side,

on my knees, and
praying for strength.

~Blynnwrites

The Story Behind the Title Poem

When I wrote “In the Dark, We All Cry,” I was listening to Pat Benatar’s “Hell Is for Children.” I don’t think I was prepared for where the song would take my mind.

I started thinking about horrible things from my own past, things my mother experienced, and the millions of adults and children throughout history who have been hurt physically, emotionally, and psychologically.

Then the storm outside began. It wasn’t some quiet little rainstorm in the background of my writing.

Thunder shook my house. The lights flickered. My dogs were frightened. And I sat there listening to this song while thinking about how much suffering human beings have carried from one generation to the next. For a brief moment, it felt almost as though the world outside was answering the thoughts inside my mind.

Thunder spoke.
Rain came down.
And I listened.

That’s where this poem began. There are pieces of so many things inside it.

Memories. Movies.

Songs. Metaphors.

Questions. Anger. Grief.

And that strange feeling we sometimes get when an idea suddenly connects to another idea, and then another, until something inside us says:

There it is. I found you.

I thought about scenes from movies that have stayed with me, including V for Vendetta and The Crow—stories where rain becomes more than weather. It becomes symbolism.

God is in the rain.

It can’t rain all the time.

Those ideas stayed somewhere in the back of my mind as I wrote.

Because rain can mean so many things.

It can be grief. It can be a cleansing. It can be destruction. It can be renewal. Sometimes it is simply rain, light and wonderful.

But sometimes, when we’re hurting, we give the world around us meaning because we are desperately trying to understand what we are feeling.

This poem was made to host everyone.

The broken, the healing, the lost.

Every person still trying to understand what has happened to them.

The person who still remembers, wishing to forget.

The people who refuse to reveal those memories..

The people who are grieving something they can name; and the people grieving something they cannot.

There is an add-amount about innocence that makes pain especially difficult to comprehend.

Children should be allowed to be children.

Woman should be allowed to be a woman feminine, masculine, have strength and never be deminshed for there’re preferences.

Men having the ability to be men never break from there past.

Everyone should be allowed to remain curious, imaginative, messy, loud, strange, joyful, and innocent.

Yet so many people lose that innocence far too early.

And when that happens, sometimes the child grows into an adult who still wonders what life would have looked like if something had never been taken from them.

That is part of what I hear when I read this poem.

We aren’t only crying for what happened.

Sometimes we’re crying for what never got the chance to happen.

Every sentence in this poem was written for someone.

Maybe you and me.

Maybe the person sitting alone in their bedroom tonight or someone driving home from work after pretending all day that they’re okay.

Or someone grieving a family member or that individual afraid of losing their job.

Someone watching a loved one become sick, living with their own illness, or those few still wondering who they are supposed to become.

Someone taking care of everyone else while quietly falling apart or who has spent years living in survival mode.

Pain has a remarkable way of finding us through our life.

It doesn’t discriminate based on who you are, a veteran, disabled person, a child or gender, where you live or anything. It just sits at the table waiting for that next strike.

It can arrive through illness, grief, loneliness, rejection, financial struggles, family problems, heartbreak, uncertainty, or simply the exhausting experience of being human.

That may be one of the few things we truly have in common.

We hurt.

But pain isn’t the only thing we share.

And that is IMPORTANT.

Because if you read In the Dark, We All Cry only as a book about suffering, you’ve missed something.

There is something else underneath it.

Love.

Love is threaded through these poems in ways that aren’t always obvious.

Sometimes love looks like staying, leaving, asking for forgiveness, or choosing yourself.

Other times its a mother helping her exhausted child walk across a hospital room.

A father giving his daughter a pencil and paper and unknowingly giving her a lifelong companion.

Often enough its remembering someone you can no longer have in your life or asking for love is simply the reason we keep going.

For me, that is where faith enters this conversation.

I have wondered why humans in the face of uncertainty say things like:

“Oh God, why?” Or “My God now what?”

Even people who question God, who don’t know what they believe.

People who are angry at whatever they believe may or may not exist.

When we reach the edge of ourselves, we often look beyond ourselves.

Maybe that is faith, instinct, innate learning, hope.

Or it is simply the human desire to believe that something out there is listening.

I don’t think I need to know the answer to write about it.

I’m interested in the question.

So yes, this poem is dark.

There are parts of it that may be uncomfortable. There are thoughts within it that come from places I don’t always enjoy revisiting. But darkness isn’t automatically evil.

Sometimes darkness is simply the place where we finally stop pretending. It’s where we cry when nobody is watching, where we admit we’re afraid, and we remember.

It’s where we ask questions.

And that’s where the peaceful feeling of becoming inspired finds us.

Because even there, something is still alive.

A minute thought, a revokable memory, a wonderful song.

Sparks of little bits of hope.

A passion and reason to keep writing.

So when I say:

In the dark, we all cry,

I’m not saying we are all broken.

I’m saying we are all human.

We all have something that has made us cry when no one could see us. We all have something we wish had never happened. Times we wish we could change.

Something we miss or we’re still trying to understand.

We also have something worth protecting, worth loving and worth becoming.

Because the darkness may be where we cry….

but it doesn’t have to be where we stay.

We cry.

We listen.

We remember.

And without a doubt, we continue.

Always choosing to never surrender to the adversity placed upon our hearts.

Always and forever,

~Blynnwrites 🌙

Three Chances

The dream began with someone I loved walking beside me.

We were headed toward a bus, shoulder to shoulder, as though nothing in the world could touch us. The street was crowded, the air gray with early morning, and the bus doors opened with a long metallic sigh.

Then, without warning, they were gone.

Not walking ahead of me. Not waiting inside.

Gone.

The crowd swallowed them as if they had never existed. I ran through strangers, calling their name until my throat burned, but no one looked at me. No one seemed to notice that someone had been taken from beside me.

I searched until the dream changed.

My dad and I were walking our dogs to his cousin’s house, a place we had always gone. It was familiar in the way childhood places are familiar: the porch, the uneven walkway, the rooms that had never been locked before. We laughed as the dogs pulled at their leashes, excited to explore the yard.

Inside, my dad’s cousin moved slowly through the house in his wheelchair. He dropped something near the floor, and I bent down in my dress to pick it up.

Someone behind me laughed.

“Wow,” a voice said, “I can see why she’s down there.”

I froze.

The words crawled over my skin. I stood up quickly, embarrassed and uncomfortable, looking around for my dad.

“Where’s my dad?” I asked. “I want to go home. We’ve been here for hours.”

My family barely looked away from the television.

“Honey, your dad’s going to be a while,” someone said gently. “Just watch movies with us. Play games.”

But the longer I waited, the more wrong the house felt.

The dogs were gone. The windows looked darker than they should have. Even the familiar hallway seemed too long.

I walked toward the back of the house, where I thought I had seen my dad disappear. A door stood at the end of the hallway.

Locked.

I knocked. “Dad?”

No answer.

I tried the knob again, and someone called from behind the door.

“We’re busy back here.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m looking for my dad. He came back here, and he isn’t answering me. How long is he going to be?”

A pause.

“We don’t know.”

I waited longer. Hours, maybe. The dream had no clock, only a heavy, sticky feeling that time was being stretched around me. I tried the door again.

Still locked.

This time, the voice behind it sounded irritated.

“You have three chances,” it said. “You’ve already been warned.”

I backed away, but I could not stop thinking about my dad. He would not leave without telling me. He would not let me wait alone for hours.

Eventually, I heard nothing from the other side of the door. No voices. No footsteps.

I told myself they must have left.

So I unlocked it.

The moment the door opened, I understood why I had not heard anything.

The room was soundproof.

My dad’s cousin’s wife appeared behind me so quietly that I did not hear her approach. She held something in her hand—a drink, dark in a clear glass.

“Drink it,” she said.

I stared at her.

“You’re going in now. You’re playing the game. We can’t help you anymore.”

“I just want my dad.”

“I know,” she said. Her voice was almost kind. “But we don’t know how long he’ll be.”

She stepped aside.

Inside the room, three men sat around a table beneath a single hanging light. A deck of cards rested in the middle. They were playing poker, but there was nothing casual about the game. The silence around them felt alive.

They pushed me into a chair.

“Now you’re playing our game,” one of them said.

“I don’t want to play your stupid game. I want my dad.”

The door closed behind me.

A man slid the cards toward my hands.

I looked down at them, confused. I had only played poker once. I barely remembered the rules. This was not a game I could win. It had been made for me to fail.

From the far side of the room, one of the men stood. He walked to another door and lifted something small and black in his hand.

There was no loud gunshot.

Only a soft click.

Then groaning.

My heart stopped.

The sound came from behind the other door.

It sounded like my dad.

“Deal,” the man at the table said.

I threw the deck across the table. Cards scattered like startled birds.

“I don’t know this game,” I screamed. “I don’t want to play. I want to go home. I want my dad.”

The men looked at each other.

“Well,” one said, smiling faintly, “that’s why you should have thought about that before you opened the door.”

They grabbed my hair and shoved the cards back toward me.

“Deal again,” one of them said. “Learn how to play.”

The silent weapon clicked again.

Another groan.

This time I knew it was him.

Something inside me broke open—not into fear, but into rage.

“I just want to go home,” I said, though my voice barely sounded like mine.

“Well, honey,” one of the men replied, “it looks like your dad isn’t going home anytime soon.”

They watched me the way wolves watch something cornered.

As though the game would unlock something in me if I played long enough.

Then I saw the knife on one man’s belt.

My dad had taught me to protect myself. He had taught me that fear was not the same thing as weakness. He had taught me that sometimes survival meant moving before you had time to think.

I grabbed the knife.

Everything after that happened in flashes: the overturned chair, the men shouting, the deck of cards falling to the floor. I fought like the room had become a living thing trying to swallow me whole.

One man fell.

Then another.

The third raised the silent weapon, but I moved before he could use it.

When the room finally became still, I stood there shaking, the knife heavy in my hand, my breath tearing through my chest.

Then I ran.

I opened the second door.

My dad was lying on a bed in the next room.

For one hopeful second, I thought I had found him in time.

Then I saw what they had done.

He was pale beneath the harsh light, his body ruined by hands that had treated him like something less than human. The room smelled like metal and cold air. I fell beside him, holding him as carefully as I could.

“Daddy,” I whispered. “I’m here. I found you.”

His eyes opened just enough to see me.

“I’m sorry, mama,” he said.

Tears burned down my face. “No. No, I’m sorry. I should have found you sooner.”

He looked at me as if he were trying to memorize my face.

“I love you,” he whispered.

And then he was gone in my arms.

I woke up before I could bring him home.

~Blynnwrites

A million miles of stratified light runs faster than time.

I want to tell you something intimate. I like starting new.

It’s not intimate like you think, but it grabbed you in. What I mean when I say I like starting new is that I hate having so many things from my past.

There’s only a certain amount of things I can handle in my vicinity that I’ve had since I was a little girl. For example, my collection of dolls. Each one has been with me since I was in high school. Each one holds its own memory.

Yet, I always have an impulse to sell or give them away because when I see them, I see the memories I have with them. Some good, some funny, and some horrible.

Hillary Duff said it best: “I’m waking up in a dream sequence.”

That’s how I feel.

Everything else is new to me—my desk, my home, the papers I write on, the Apple computer I’m typing on, the books I read, even though I haven’t read in a while.

Even though the things are new to me, some are thrifted, not brand new. Like the pictures on my wall: beautiful, antique-looking French canvas paintings, an antique Japanese wall art piece, and my Gone with the Wind poster that I always wanted when I was little, yet never wanted to pay full price for—and then buy a frame for.

I finally found it a year ago for $10 at a yard sale.

A little fortune, but something I could finally say I had.

Then, at an antique comic book store in Austin, Texas, I found a $10 Gone with the Wind soundtrack.

So this feels like a highway of new and repurposed life.

I just spent time on the phone correcting my gym membership that was cancelled because I haven’t gone back since having my own gym in my garage.

But there’s something about wanting to be surrounded by people that you miss—people entering the sauna, talking, or just living in the moment, trying to figure life out.

A new beginning for every encounter, where we all meet each individual on a soul level, trying to figure out life and how we will survive, thrive, and live.

I find many things beautiful, and people say there’s no beauty in that when it’s so dark.

I see the beauty because of being grateful every day. It’s like a healing in me, where the surrounding viewpoint is beauty.

Some might not understand that feeling. Some might take it for granted, and believe me, I do too most days.

But once I stop—even in the harsh times—I am grateful because the amount of things we have to endure, survive, and live through should have mentally broken each of us.

I remember buying clothes just because I could.

I never had so many clothes, even though those clothes came from thrift stores or clearance racks. I would buy them without ever wearing them, thinking it would be so wonderful to wear them, and then once I put them on, they weren’t my style anymore.

So there I went again, buying different pieces just to satisfy my void.

The void I couldn’t fill.

The void that had been eating away at my heart like a plague.

The void only so many understand when you feel violated just to be in your own skin.

A depression you want to take away.

So clothes became the option—a temporary relief to look good for just a small amount of time, until you wished to give it away again.

So my existential question I ask of you:

Can something have a second life without pretending it never had a first?

And maybe that’s what we are all doing with ourselves, too.

You’re not brand new.

You’re repurposed.

Living in the light just to be bright again. Finding joy.

And perhaps that is what starting new really means to me—and maybe to you, too.

It’s not about forgetting.

It’s not becoming someone else just to try and forget the past and pretend it never happened.

It is not even filling the spaces that hurt and made you broken for a time.

It is simply moving.

Moving along the highway at whatever speed you need, watching those images pass without allowing them to define you.

Watching those lights become streaks against the window. Watching old versions of myself—and perhaps old versions of yourself—disappear behind us.

Knowing I cannot pull over every time something I loved passes by.

The highway keeps going.

And it is our choice to get off at the next exit, or bask in the lights and keep moving forward.

And so that’s what I choose.

I choose to stay on this highway.

To feel the love, the heartache, and the joy that I had the chance to learn what those emotions feel like.

Even with the void sitting beside me.

Even while knowing the void is not finished with me yet.

I know I will thrive.

I will still love through the peace and quiet of seeing these images remain in the past.

And perhaps, somewhere along this highway, I will learn that moving forward does not mean leaving everything behind.

Sometimes it simply means learning how to carry what deserves to come with you—and letting the rest become a light disappearing in the rearview mirror.

All along the highway and choosing love,

~Blynnwrites

When you are out on a date or spending time with someone you like, do you ever look at them and think, Why are you here?

Why do you like this person? And, for the life of you, you cannot answer.

I was sitting across from someone, and I did not mean to stare, but I was so bothered by the way they ate—like the food was going to be taken away from them.

I have had this thing since I was little: I like to be clean and proper as much as possible. I hate getting my clothes or hands dirty on certain days. Those certain days are when I am dressed delicately, feeling girly, or wearing a shirt I really love.

Other times, when I do not care, I eat like a man: baby back ribs, wings, steak, a big juicy burger—anything that requires my hands. I love the juiciness from the sauce left on the plate, but with my large chest, it is almost expected that a drop of sauce will land on my shirt. So, I wear napkins as a bib.

Back to the point: do you ever look at someone and get annoyed by the way they eat? Some do not close their mouths. Some do not use a fork or knife properly. I want to go over there and teach them how to use the knife or make them close their mouth before talking.

Is it wrong to think this way? Sometimes I think to myself:

“Gosh, you are horrible. You are so annoying. They love spending time with you, and here you are judging them by the way they eat.

You are no better than them. Just turn away, or do not look up from your plate. Calm down, and you will enjoy your day.”

I guess I have an etiquette pet peeve, and it is cumbersome, to say the least. I wish to enjoy meals and not get frustrated so easily. I guess that is why I sometimes prefer to eat alone: I do not judge others, and I do not judge myself.

I have always wondered if people think like this constantly, like I do. Or am I so gosh-darn insensitive because of these thoughts that plague me?

I wish to enjoy an ordinary meal and sitting across the table from someone I adore, without ugly comments racing through my thoughts because of their lack of etiquette, or my lack of empathy.

Maybe I have a little misophonia, where eating sounds annoy me and cause anger or frustration in the moment.

However, I guess I haven’t given people enough credit and I need to learn to stop being judgmental on the dining table.

This napkin-bib queen, staring at her Prince Charming, is nowhere near the horrifying image I have in my head. This is actually rather adorable—a man simply enjoying his meal. 😂

From the other side of the table,

~Blynnwrites

The Story Behind the Poem

Something happened in my life that made me question many things, including my own memories. Some people always tell me that’s not how it happened, stop lying or you always see me as the bad person or you play the victim too much.

So I question my memories now, and I question the people I had in my life too.

I don’t know if you have ever experienced that strange feeling of remembering something while simultaneously questioning the pieces surrounding it.

A moment is there.

Another is missing.

Something feels vivid, while something beside it feels fragmented.

Like a mental fog placed a permanent blanket on the old heart and brain.

And suddenly you are standing among pieces of your own history, trying to understand what belongs where.

That is where “Broken Glass” comes from.

When I was eighteen, my body went through something I was not prepared for. I had major surgery shortly after graduating high school, and what I thought would be the beginning of recovery and a new life slowly became much more complicated.

I was told I would be up and moving again in no time, to smile and be grateful.

Instead, I fought an abscess and infection, blown out veins from severe antibiotics, nerve damage in my left and right arm. My abdomen required cleaning and packing. Walking hurt, sitting hurt couldn’t get comfortable without pillows behind my back, moving frightened me because every bend or stretch around my incision and scar made me believe something inside me might tear apart.

Doctors and family told me it wouldn’t. Yet, I remained still afraid and untrustworthy of my own body.

My recovery was brutal, and life outside my body did not stop simply because I was trying to heal. I lost my scholarship and didn’t know what to do.

My family was struggling. My father was facing incarceration again. My mother was exhausted. Our living circumstances were difficult, and there were moments when I needed help with things I never imagined needing help with at eighteen.

I remember falling inside the toilet once, embarrassed and grossed out.

I remember needing people to help me walk, not wanting to get out of bed, depressed and still fighting when getting the look of “get up your being lazy, we need you to get better already.”

I remember having to trust other people with a body that no longer felt entirely like mine, becoming hollow just to get better.

That last part became especially complicated as I grew older.

During recovery, I trusted people to help me stand, breath, move, sit, bathe, heal, and eventually experience intimacy again.

Trust became intertwined with vulnerability.

And vulnerability did not always remain safe.

By July 2015, my mother told me I needed to begin working and help with the bills. I didn’t feel completely ready, but I did it anyway.

That became another pattern in my life:

Keep moving.

You’re fine.

You’re strong.

You’ll figure it out.

Eventually, I moved out with a boyfriend while my mother and brother were also part of that chapter of my life.

Things happened during that period that I am not ready to explain completely here.

Some caused a long fracture within my family.

Another involved my body and left me feeling broken all over again.

Years later, I have found myself returning to pieces of those memories and asking questions I don’t always know how to answer.

That uncertainty is difficult to explain.

Memory does not always return to me like a film playing perfectly from beginning to end. Sometimes it arrives like broken glass.

A fragment.

A reflection.

A sharp edge.

Something recognizable beside something I cannot place.

And sometimes I don’t know whether I want to pick up every piece.

That is the meaning behind this poem.

The broken glass is not only memory.

It is also the body.

A body can feel shattered and still remain alive.

Skin can scar and still stretch.

A person can carry fragments of what happened without those fragments becoming the entirety of who they are.

That is why I wrote:

Shards
of what once was,
still clinging
to me,
yet sharp enough
to bleed me.

Some memories still hurt when I touch them.

Some I understand differently now than I did when I was younger.

Some remain unfinished.

And I am learning that I do not have to force every fragment into place before I am allowed to continue living.

Perhaps freedom isn’t forgetting everything that broke us.

Perhaps it is reaching a point where the broken pieces no longer decide where we are allowed to walk.

That is what I am asking for at the end of this poem.

Let me walk
without fear.

Let me forget
what once broke me.

Let me
be FREE.

Not because my past never happened.

Not because every memory has become clear.

But because I am still here, inside a body that endured more than I once believed it could.

The glass may be broken.

But I am not made only of its shards.

Always and forever,

~Blynnwrites

The Story Behind the Poem

There has been a weight of heaviness falling upon my shoulders ever since I was a little girl.

What weight? You might ask.

The weight of life.

The feeling that you must always keep moving, keep pushing through, keep surviving long enough to be loved by someone other than yourself.

When I was young, I carried this strange thought that no amount of things I accomplished would matter to my family if I didn’t survive long enough to do them.

So somewhere in the back of my mind, I would tell myself:

Another day.

Another step.

Come on, get up.

Make your family proud before you’re gone.

There is something incredibly sad about thinking about death at eleven years old because of an illness.

Not many children around me knew what it was like to carry that particular weight, so I lived with much of it inside my own head.

I wondered what my funeral would look like.

Would my family dress me in all pink with my AC/DC Converse and a cute lace skirt? Maybe a dress?

Would I be cremated because we couldn’t afford a coffin or funeral services?

Those were real thoughts I had as a child.

Eventually, while learning about the human body and spending time volunteering, I learned that people could donate their bodies to science.

And in my young mind, I thought I had found the solution.

Don’t waste money on me.

If I died, donate my body instead. Maybe someone could finally figure out what had happened to me.

So I began dropping little hints to my family here and there. If something happened to me, I wanted my body donated to science.

Looking back, I realize how much weight that little girl was carrying.

And how some of that weight inevitably became a burden carried by the people who loved her, too.

When I wrote “Composure,” I remembered all the hallways I walked through, the streets I wandered, and the nights I crawled into bed hoping I would wake up the next morning.

Not because I was afraid only for myself.

I was afraid of my family finding me gone.

I didn’t want them to carry that pain.

Maybe that is why the rock became such an important symbol to me.

There is another truth behind this poem, though.

One day, while walking along a trail, I watched a stranger kicking a few rocks along the path.

He seemed completely absorbed in whatever was happening inside his mind.

Then he kicked one particular little rock.

For a moment, I swear I heard him say, almost as if something inside him were breaking:

Move, my rock. Please move.

Maybe I heard him correctly.

Maybe I didn’t.

But something about that moment stayed with me.

That tiny rock sat there physically weighing almost nothing, yet for those few seconds it seemed to carry thousands of pounds.

Then a twig snapped.

The moment broke.

We looked at one another and smiled.

“Hi, how are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m okay. How are you?”

“I’m fine, thank you. Have a blessed day.”

“You too.”

And that was it.

We continued in opposite directions.

I never knew his name.

I never knew his story.

I don’t know what his rock represented, or whether there was a rock at all beyond the one lying beneath his shoe.

But sometimes I still wonder about him.

Did your rock ever move?

Maybe that is what “Composure” has become for me.

A symbolic poem about the longing for movement when something in your life has become unbearably heavy.

We praise people for being rocks.

Strong.

Dependable.

Unshaken.

We tell them to keep their composure. To endure. To remain standing no matter how many times life pushes against them.

But even a rock can become trapped beneath enough weight.

And sometimes strength isn’t remaining exactly where you are.

Sometimes strength is finally asking:

Can I move?

Can I shift just enough to breathe?

Can something please give?

I think there are people walking beside us every day carrying rocks we will never see.

Maybe yours is illness.

Maybe grief.

Maybe responsibility, loneliness, fear, rejection, or simply the exhaustion of having remained strong for too long.

I cannot promise that every rock will move when we ask it to.

But I understand the longing behind the words:

Move,
my rock.

Please
move for me.

And perhaps sometimes surviving begins with allowing ourselves to move.

Always and forever,

~Blynnwrites

I was never one to wear makeup.

I was raised in a Christian home where little girls rarely received makeup kits. Instead, I played outside with Hula-Hoops, Twister, that bright jumping ball with the handle, and a dollhouse filled with Barbies and Bratz dolls.

But what I did most throughout my childhood was play football and wrestle with my brother.

My father is a Marine, and he taught us discipline. We exercised in the mornings, after school, and always as punishment. My mother said she did not want “fat kids,” so everything became a competition—who could finish the fastest, who could do it correctly, and who could push a little harder than the day before. Those competitions became resentment, that’s another story.

My father always told me:

Beat yourself. Give everything your all. Always Kick Ass.

I do not know why, but I always seemed to be surrounded by Marine men. My father is a Marine, and several of my coaches were Marines too. Strength, discipline, loyalty, and respect were not simply words they repeated. They were principles they expected me to carry.

They taught me to work hard, remain committed, respect the people beside me, and never surrender simply because something became difficult.

By the time physical education came around at my private school, I excelled.

I beat both the girls and boys in push-ups, sit-ups, running, and nearly every challenge placed before us.

Then one of the boys I liked said,

“Man, she’s stronger than all of us. Are we sure she’s a girl?”

I defended myself.

“It’s not my fault I train every day.”

My coach was a Marine too. Whenever he spoke to my parents, they were proud of what I had accomplished at such a young age.

Track became the opportunity everyone saw for me.

I began training, placed second in my heat, and learned to love relays. Relays were never only about one person. They were a shared effort, each runner carrying the responsibility of making the entire team proud.

I loved exercising.

But doing it from childhood can eventually make the body tired.

I am overweight now because many things unfolded throughout my life. Illness, exhaustion, grief, medical changes, and survival all became part of my body’s history.

Yet somewhere inside me, I still hear that old voice:

Those are excuses, and they are.

That belief was drilled into me when I was young.

Even now, when I acknowledge pain or fatigue, part of me questions whether I am being honest or simply failing to push hard enough.

Some days, I am tired of exercising.

Then a wave rises inside me—a sudden force of motivation pushing my four-foot-eleven body forward.

You are going to do this.

Be great again.

Your body is not broken.

It only needs a push to begin again.

Through all those years, the only makeup I wore was glitter eyeshadow and lip balm.

I was told that little girls should not wear makeup unless they were competing in pageants. Makeup was not considered appropriate for girls like me.

Some of my friends began wearing it early. They looked so beautiful with color brushed across their faces, their eyes sparkling beneath the sunlight. People approached them as though they had suddenly become important.

The rest of us watched quietly, thinking:

I want that too.

I was popular with the boys, but I did not have many girlfriends. I was the tomboy with a beautiful face, just never beautiful enough to be asked on a date.

There was one boy I really liked. He was tall and skinny, yet muscular enough to compete with me.

Eventually, I learned to let the boys win.

They seemed to like me more when I stopped putting all my strength into the games.

The men who trained me taught me never to diminish my strength.

Yet the boys around me taught me that strength could make me less desirable.

So I dimmed my light at an early age just to be liked.

That was the first time I understood what it could cost to be seen differently.

My best friend began wearing makeup early too.

Soon, I discovered why.

She had been forced to grow up too quickly, surrounded by a darkness none of us fully understood.

I once believed makeup was what made girls beautiful.

I did not yet understand that, for some girls, it was armor.

As I grew older, women would often ask me,

“Honey, you’re so beautiful. Do you ever wear makeup? Not that you need it—but do you?”

No matter how gently the question was formed, I often heard it as criticism.

Sometimes, it even felt cruel.

It felt as though commenting on my bare face was a rite of passage they had to complete before they could continue speaking to me.

My answer has always been simple.

“No, only on special occasions. I prefer being natural. Besides, my skin breaks out every time I wear makeup.”

I have eczema, and I learned early in life that my body reacts strongly to certain substances. I am allergic to latex, mushrooms, and iodine. I do not understand every chemical listed on the side of those tiny cosmetic bottles, so I have never trusted them completely.

Sometimes, merely touching the wrong thing causes my hands to swell.

I would rather protect my comfort than risk an allergic reaction for the sake of appearing more polished.

Still, the questions continued.

They were often disguised as compliments, yet I heard the expectation beneath them.

Why are you not using it?

Why are you not enhancing yourself?

Why are you choosing to remain this way?

My parents would reassure me by saying that people were simply jealous of my natural beauty.

For a while, I tried to believe them.

But natural beauty began to feel less like a gift and more like a burden—something other people constantly examined, praised, questioned, and compared.

Then puberty arrived.

My body began changing in ways I did not understand. Medical treatments, medications, chemicals, radiation procedures, and years of physical hardship changed the way I experienced my own body.

The face people called naturally beautiful slowly became a source of insecurity.

Not because beauty had disappeared, but because I had begun to believe it was something fragile—something that could be damaged, judged, altered, or taken away.

I simply wanted to be loved without commentary.

Yes, being called beautiful sounds wonderful.

Sometimes, it still feels wonderful.

But when praise is repeatedly placed beside criticism, both begin to distort the reflection.

You are beautiful.

You would look prettier if—

Your face is lovely, but—

That color is too bright.

Are you really going out like that?

Eventually, every compliment begins carrying the possibility of correction.

It reminds me of the distorted thinking associated with body dysmorphia—not because I am diagnosing myself through these words, but because no matter how the face or body appears, those ugly thoughts can still perch upon the shoulders and whisper:

You are never enough.

That is why I both love and resent being called beautiful.

Part of me wants to receive it.

Part of me immediately questions it.

I feel like an incomplete never beauty, shaped by standards placed upon women by men and reinforced by women against other women.

I own a makeup bag filled with tiny bottles, brushes, palettes, powders, and colors.

Yet I still do not truly know how to wear makeup without worrying that I look like a clown—with large blushed cheeks, dark red lips, and every feature suddenly louder than I intended.

Whenever I tried a bold lipstick, someone in my family would say,

“That is a very bright red.”

Or:

“You’re going out like that?”

Those comments followed me into the mirror.

Then there was the mascara running beneath my eyes after I sweated or absentmindedly rubbed them.

Makeup never stayed delicate on me.

I felt like a linebacker wearing cosmetics—strong, overheated, sweating, and drenched beneath products I had never learned to trust.

So it became easier to go places bare-faced.

Easier to let my skin breathe.

Easier to avoid the itching, swelling, smearing, and uncertainty.

Easier to recognize myself.

But even bare-faced, I still notice the looks.

Sometimes, I sense jealousy. Sometimes, I hear another comment disguised as admiration. Sometimes, the words are probably harmless, yet they still carry the weight of every judgment that came before them.

Once again, I feel myself becoming heavy beneath someone else’s idea of beauty.

Perhaps that is what I have wanted all along:

not to be declared beautiful,

not to be corrected into beauty,

not to be compared, examined, envied, or improved—

but simply to be loved without my face becoming the first subject of conversation.

I was taught by Marines to value strength, discipline, loyalty, and respect. They taught me never to surrender simply because something became difficult.

Yet the world also taught me to lose on purpose, soften my strength, question my natural face, and dim myself so others could feel comfortable beside me.

I am still unlearning that.

I am learning that beauty should not require discomfort.

It should not demand an allergic reaction, an apology, a smaller body, a quieter presence, or a version of femininity that does not belong to me.

Maybe I will always have complicated feelings when someone calls me beautiful.

Maybe part of me will smile while another part waits for the criticism that usually follows.

But I no longer want to spend my life trying to become complete beneath standards that were never mine.

I do not need to paint over the girl who wrestled, ran, competed, sweated, survived, and refused to remain down.

She was never unfinished.

She was never too strong to be feminine.

She was never lacking because she arrived bare-faced.

She was only taught to believe that beauty belonged to everyone else’s judgment.

And now, slowly,

she is taking it back.

Loving embrace,

~Blynnwrites

I

The Story Behind the Poem

Music has always been another language to me.

While writing this poem, my playlists never stopped changing. One moment I was listening to LP, Queen, George Strait, Meat Loaf, Leon, The Killers, or The 1975. The next, an orchestra filled the room, followed by opera, folk music, Tejano, cumbia, or an instrumental piece that somehow understood exactly what I was feeling without speaking a single word.

Two songs stayed with me while I wrote this poem: “We All Die Young” by SteelHeart and “You’re All I Need” by Mötley Crüe. They lingered in the background while my thoughts slowly found their way onto the page.

Looking at my playlists, you might think they have no connection to one another.

But they do.

They all understand emotion.

Every song carries something different: fear, hope, grief, longing, freedom, rebellion, love, regret, or joy. My playlists may seem chaotic, but my heart has never separated music into genres. It simply recognizes honesty.

Music has always been one of my greatest forms of therapy.

When life becomes too loud and my thoughts refuse to quiet themselves, I get in my car, turn the volume up, and drive. Sometimes I sing. Sometimes I scream every lyric I know. Sometimes I drive in complete silence after the music ends because the songs have already said everything I couldn’t.

Like so many people, certain songs carry memories.

I hear one and suddenly I’m remembering someone I haven’t seen in years. I remember exchanging songs with people I loved, sitting together without saying much because the music was speaking for us.

I always dreamed of sharing music with someone who simply loved discovering new sounds. Instead, I often found people who treated music like a competition—whose genre was better, whose artist was more authentic, whose taste was superior.

I never understood that.

For me, sharing music is like sharing a piece of yourself.

Sometimes a playlist tells me more about a person than a conversation ever could.

It reveals kindness, humor, heartbreak, imagination, nostalgia, or complete chaos.

Sometimes all of those at once.

I am probably all of those myself.

One day my playlist might introduce me to a beautiful folk ballad like Fairytale of New York. The next, social media sends me something completely ridiculous like The Higher the Socks or Beamed Up by Foos Gone Wild, and I cannot help but laugh because they remind me of my mother and brother, who have always loved artists like Cypress Hill and music with that same energy.

I love that music refuses to stay inside neat little boxes.

It grows the same way people do.

Looking back, I don’t think this poem was ever just about a song.

It was about what music has carried for me throughout my life.

The memories.

The people.

The grief.

The freedom.

And the hope that somewhere, someone else is listening to the same song, feeling a little less alone because of it.

Music has always found the words before I could.

Perhaps that’s why I continue writing.

Now I am curious,

If your life had a soundtrack, what song would you never skip?

What song carries a memory you’ll never forget?

What song gets you through the moments you can’t explain?

Mine: Queen: George Strait: I Got A Car and Bon Jovi: Pictures of You.

My dads: Creedence Clearwater Revival: Have You Ever Seen The Rain and George Strait: The Cowboy Rides Away.

Eventually forever,

~Blynnwrites

Yet, there is this quiet burden
of never giving you the best of myself—
the woman you so wishfully deserve.

My trust has been compromised,
yet you only see the brightness I show you,
never the redness surrounding the heart.

There are wounds the heart learns to conceal,
burdens a woman carries long after the world believes she has healed.

There are moments that fracture a soul,
pieces of a woman’s heart
she carries through every season of her life.

Childhood leaves its shadows.
It is where fear first learns our name.
Adulthood gives those shadows new names,
and longer extended roots.

Night falls,
and with it come memories
that refuse to remain buried.

Echoes of screaming
that no one hears.

Silent cries
that never found a voice.

My mind is left
in crimson dismay.

No tears shed for grieving
have ever been wasted.

The mind quietly rehearses tragedy,
again and again,
until happiness itself
begins to feel temporary.

A beautiful day.

A loving embrace.

A peaceful afternoon.

All can disappear
the moment
that one memory
returns.

I wish to love you
the way you love me.

Yet there are parts of my heart
still learning
that love
and fear
were never meant
to live
inside the same home.

Maybe one day
you will hold my heart
without asking it
to forget
what it survived.

One day
I will stop apologizing
for the redness surrounding it.

Until then,

I will continue loving
with the heart I have—

not because it is unscarred,

but because
it never stopped beating.

~ Blynnwrites

No one knew what she was waiting for.

She sits alone watching people pass her by.

No one sees her. No one ever cares.

She has been waiting there for what feels like forever,

beneath the station lights,

her suitcase still resting faithfully at her side.

She was supposed to be married sometime.

Every train that arrives makes her heart rise again.

Maybe this time, he will came back for me.

Then one evening…

she sees him.

Older now, somehow more wiser.

He’s standing beside another woman,

his hand wrapped gently around hers.

She screams his name, falling into step.

But the world moves through her like smoke.

No one turns, No one hears her scream out his name.

Confused, she looks down at herself—

the same pink dress and combat boots,

the same delicate engagement ring

she has worn every day waiting for him,

since that fateful night

Slowly…

the truth begins to unravel.

She was never abandoned.

She died there years ago.

Now she waits beneath the flickering lights,

wondering why love stayed alive, while she was gone from this earth.

“I don’t wish to be here anymore, I want to go home.”

Years drift by.

Seasons change.

Trains come and go.

Walking the halls of the train station

Looking at life change before her eyes.

Different cultures and fashion comes and goes

One evening…

he returns.

This time,

he is alone.

She walks beside him

and gently places her hand against his face.

And whispers “I love you.”

A cold breeze brushes his skin.

He closes his eyes.

Her name escapes his lips

“Eliza?”

“I’m here,” she says gently.

For the first time in years,

he hears her and he sees her.

Tears fall before another moment passes by,

“I’ve missed you.

I never stopped loving you.

I came that day…”

His voice breaks while taking a breather.

“…but you were already gone.”

The station falls silent, upon her ears,

At the same moment both start thinking differently,

All those years,

she believed he had left her waiting.

All those years,

he believed she had left without saying goodbye.

Sometimes,

love isn’t ended by betrayal.

Sometimes,

it is stolen by time.

I miss you, and

I love you.

I wrote this a month ago in my notes and forgot about the beauty waiting to be seen. Hope you enjoyed the poem.

I wanted to experience the things other people called reckless, spontaneous, and delicious. I wanted to live before living was taken from me.

My intention was to love you fully, until my days were numbered.

I felt it every day—that an unsuspecting moment could be my last.

When I met you, we were inside our history class. You were a giant compared to me. I was already sad to be there. I had wanted AP, but because of my absences, they placed me in regular courses. My extracurricular activities mattered more to me, so I said yes and accepted it.

Still, I hated walking to that class.

I felt inadequate. Not special like my friends in AP. I had been put on academic probation for missing classes and dyslexia training, and I carried that shame with me into all those rooms.

Then I saw you.

I felt something—awestruck and scared.

You looked so different from the people I was used to. I thought you were a football player, maybe a linebacker, because of the way your body was built. You had this slow wisdom about you, a tantalizing presence.

I remember walking in, passing everyone, and then passing you. It felt like I was gravitating toward you, but I kept walking, straight to the back of the room. I sat in a corner where I hoped no one would see me.

Everyone turned because I was new.

But you were the only person I saw.

Your hazel eyes.

The teacher said, “Okay, let’s begin.”

Suddenly, I felt insecure about what I was wearing. I had always been theatrical—lace and skirts layered over my school uniform. I hated uniforms. Accessories were necessary.

I figured I wouldn’t live that long anyway. I might as well be happy being cute and gothically weird.

Athletics had made me muscular, too. When I dressed plainly, people knew I didn’t feel well. I became a hollow shell walking through the halls.

Once, I overheard someone say, “She has a resting bitch face, but she’s beautiful. I’ve never seen her before.”

Someone else answered, “She’s never here. She’s always sick, so seeing her is rare.”

One day, my ex-boyfriend’s friend said, “You’re not going to talk to her? She looks lonely.”

“No. She told me never to speak to her again.”

I wanted to cry.

No one knew what had happened. It is embarrassing for me to say even now.

I wasn’t chosen.

My cousin was.

After that, I avoided those hallways. I took the longer routes—the ones no one else walked. I isolated myself. Sometimes I passed by your room to see my favorite crush, but I never said anything.

You were forbidden fruit.

Someone I should not want.

After months of working together in class, I discovered you were my ex’s best friend. I had not known.

But I liked you.

I really liked you.

Some people said I must have known, that I wanted revenge. I didn’t. It was never revenge. It was simply chemistry.

The most tragic moment came one day after I returned to school. I felt lonelier than ever, so I finally took my best friend’s advice and sat with her in the cafeteria.

I couldn’t eat, still recovering.

I felt nervous and frightened inside that crowded place. There were too many people, too many eyes.

Mid-conversation, I looked up.

There you both were—two tall figures, friends, looking at me. Waiting for something. Maybe mocking me.

It felt like a setup.

First, I looked at my past. Skinny, sharp, smiling eyes and a wide smile.

Then I looked at you. Tall and muscular, with a round face, hazel eyes, and full lips. You were not smiling. There was only a painful expression that seemed to say, Please choose me.

Around you, the people at the table wore mocking looks.

I looked at each of your faces one last time and felt my heart break into two, right in front of your eyes. A slow panic attack began rising inside me.

I turned to my friend.

“I’m leaving.”

“Okay.”

I stood and slowly walked out of the cafeteria, vowing never to enter it again.

I went to the restroom and slowed my heart for a few minutes. Then I found the office where my other friends spent their time. I knew you would never enter that place.

There, I was at peace.

I still don’t know why you both decided to occupy the same space and mock me, as though I had always known you were friends.

It wasn’t my intention.

It wasn’t revenge.

It was simply chemistry—misery finding misery in the quiet spaces, beginning to feel understood.

A love flourishing like a lantern, sparking something reckless.

Love.

This tall, handsome boy sparked a fire inside my soul during the days when I was wasting away.

Not many people knew I was fighting for my life every second.

I was taken to the hospital more times than I could count. I was always instructed to take it easy, but I was stubborn. I wanted to practice. I wanted to win at swimming, help the relay team, be a part of something great, at least only for me.

I swam the hardest stroke: the butterfly—both individually and as the butterfly leg of the medley relay. I also swam freestyle for the relay team, taking the final position as anchor.

My medals tell the story—first, second, and third place during my freshman and sophomore years. Then my body gave up. The doctors told me I couldn’t swim or participate in water polo anymore.

Every movement became sickening.

Once, during training, I almost drowned after a flip turn.

I felt numb. Something I loved had been taken from me yet again.

But you stood beside me while I was bitter and hurting. You took my hand. You carried my bags.

Until I pushed you away.

I felt like a burden upon the sky, upon every person in my life.

I wanted you in more ways than I could count.

You told me, “I know you’re hurting, and I know you’re pushing me away. I know you’re smart. But I love you, and I’ll wait for you to calm down.”

After another hospital stay, I started hearing rumors about a party. They said you and another best friend had done something.

I knew we were on a break.

My friend told me it was a lie. “We saw each other there. He talked to another girl, but we just hung out.”

Maybe I was stupid to take you back and allow our moments to become so intimate.

Still, I adored you.

I loved you, even through your possessiveness and jealousy.

My prom night wasn’t special. It was built on a lie and an impulse.

My mother said, “You only get one prom. Go, baby girl. Not for anyone else. Go for you.”

Other people had months to prepare. I had one week.

I couldn’t find a dress that fit. I wanted something pink with flowers and high heels wrapped in laces. What I got—and I am grateful for it, even though it still hurts—was a ten-dollar thrifted wedding dress, pointy black and beige Coach heels that I wore fore for an interview; they didn’t match my dress, yet I could walk in them and stand.

I felt like I was attending my own funeral.

Nothing ever worked out the way I imagined. I went along with it because I wanted the experience.

I sat beside you, knowing none of my friends liked you.

That hurt. The night already felt ruined.

Then I saw my ex-boyfriend walk in with the woman who would soon become his wife, soon expecting too. She wore a mint-green dress. They were both tall, skinny, and beautiful.

I was so jealous, to be happy like that.

I wanted to smile, not feel misplaced inside that hall.

Then I saw the one person I had always been forbidden to want. He watched me from a balcony, shaking his head as he looked into my eyes, as though he were thinking, You could have done better; why him?

One small tear rose in my eye.

I shared one dance with you and then messaged my family to pick me up.

“I’m not feeling well,” I lied.

Anger rushed from your side.

“I thought we were going to spend time together.”

“I’m not feeling well anymore.”

I said goodbye to my friends and went home.

I cried for hours while listening to my cartoons. I regretted not going to the after-parties. My phone kept blowing up, but I just sat there, waiting for anything to pass.

The pain. The night. My life, let this night just end already.

Anything, I regretted going just for the simple fact, “I went to prom.”

That was my wildest self—not a girl without fear, but a girl who was terrified she would disappear before she ever had the chance to live.

She dressed in lace over her uniform. She swam the butterfly until her body failed. She walked the long, empty hallways and loved the people she was forbidden to want.

She was sick, stubborn, jealous, theatrical, lonely, and alive.

More than anything, she wanted to be chosen.

But even when no one chose her, she kept choosing one more experience.

One more race.

One more strange outfit.

One more dance.

One more reckless spark of love.

A haunting collection of memories written in a journey full of love and regrets, just to say I experienced something before I was gone.

Remembering one more reckless spark of love through hazel eyes and haunting hallways.

I’m still swimming,

~Blynnwrites

The Story Behind the Poem

This poem is about someone I once knew—someone who was part of my life for a long time.

For years, I chased that love. I wanted nothing more than to say yes to it completely, but something always stood in my way. It was as though my soul already knew what my heart refused to accept: we would not work in the long run.

I still miss him and the way we grew up together. There was something beautiful about the bond we shared, but our memories eventually became tainted. Attraction can feel all-consuming, breathtaking, and alluring. Yet deception, anticipation, and mistrust can alter that pull.

I think of it as polarization: two people who once felt magnetically drawn to each other becoming aligned in a way that forces them apart. The energy between them does not disappear. It simply changes direction. Past mistakes and haunting truths remain charged between them until closeness becomes repulsion—and love can no longer hold them together.

This is what happens when the scientific and imaginative sides of my mind collide.

This also explains why, when I look at an ordinary tree, I see both its anatomy and its magic.

When I wrote this poem, I was sitting on a bench beside my favorite fairy tree.

It is not literally a fairy tree. There are no tiny doors or figurines hidden beneath it. I simply like to imagine that trees are where fairies live, and this particular tree has always felt magical to me.

Its expansive trunk, twisting branches, and weathered bark remind me that it has been standing there for many years. In my ecology and plant anatomy classes, I learned that the rings inside a tree’s trunk can tell the story of the seasons it has survived. They reveal years of abundant rain, severe drought, damage, and recovery.

I often wonder what secrets my tree carries within it.

Would its rings reveal severe droughts like the ones I have endured in my own life? Would they speak of extreme winters, cold enough to resemble what my heart has sometimes felt? Would they show evidence of wildfires that nearly took its life, much like the experiences that have left their marks on mine?

I do not know what my favorite tree has survived.

Was there someone who loved it before I did? Am I the first person who truly noticed it and spent time beside it as though it were a friend among the earth? When I am old and gone, will some part of it remember me? Will it miss the person who once sat beneath its branches, filling pages with questions?

So many versions of my life have sat beside that tree.

I have brought it memories, imagined futures, heartache, and countless unanswered questions. But more than anything, I have brought it my desire for freedom.

Freedom is what I want walking beside me.

Freedom is what I want to stay.

Many memories have intertwined their fingers within this poem. Some belong to someone who carried his own darkness but often blamed others for his choices. I have done that too. I am human, and I have also had to confront the ways I allowed pain to shape my behavior.

When I write, “I’m still chasing that dream,” I am speaking about a dream I have carried since I was a little girl: the dream of freedom, success, and a life I can be proud of.

I want to look at everything I have endured and be able to say:

I survived.
I am still here.
I am proud of the woman I have become.

Some days, I believe those words completely. On other days, I do not.

I once thought my life would turn out differently. Because of that, every setback felt like another mountain placed in front of me. But I am learning that a changed path does not mean a failed life.

The final words—“never next to you”—are not simply about losing someone.

They are about choosing myself.

They mean I will continue chasing my dream, but I will not do it beside someone whose darkness threatens to pull me away from my own light. I can remember what we shared, mourn what we lost, and still choose not to return.

I can love the memory without surrendering my freedom.

And I can sit beside my fairy tree knowing that, this time, I chose my life.

And now I wonder—

~Explore your thoughts~

Did you read this poem the way I intended?

Or did you discover a meaning of your own?

Will you sit beside my fairy tree and read with me?

Eventually,

~Blynnwrites

Read this one with care. Within it is one of my deepest truths: sometimes the people we love suffer through more than we can see, yet somehow survive long enough to say, “I love you.”

When I first discussed this poem, I was not ready to reveal its entire story in one sitting. There was another memory beneath the words—one I needed more time and courage to share.

That memory begins on a hospital morning when even standing felt impossible.

A photograph of me in my hospital room in June 2014. Beneath my smile, my body was visibly swollen and exhausted. I was fighting an abscess, collapsed veins, and relentless pain while hoping I would finally be allowed to go home. This photograph reminds me that survival can look joyful from the outside while the body is quietly fighting within.

This poem is about illness, shame, survival, and the people who hold us together when we are too broken to hold ourselves.

It is dedicated to both my mother and father.

“If I Write My Story”

~by Brandi Lynn Patino

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I get told to write my story,

They say it may help someone heal.

But some nights my hands start shaking,

And my memories become too real.

I sit beside unfinished pages,

Reading words I cannot keep.

I remember hospital mornings,

And the nights I could not sleep.

I wake up needing the restroom,

My body heavy, weak, and slow.

My mother rises beside me,

Helping me where I need to go.

She holds my arm while I am trembling,

Guiding me across the floor.

But my strength slips out beneath me,

And I cannot make it anymore.

I sit upon the toilet crying,

Tears burning behind my eyes.

“Why me?” I whisper softly,

Humiliated by my own life.

I look toward the walk-in shower,

Cold tile shining pale and blue.

And for one exhausted moment,

I do not know what else to do.

I want to disappear completely,

To stop fighting battles unseen.

To stop pretending I am hopeful,

When I feel broken underneath.

But my mother kneels beside me,

Her hands steady against my knees.

She looks at me with tired kindness,

And says the words that carry me:

“Don’t let this break you.”

“You are stronger than you know.”

“You’ve survived so many moments. Please don’t let yourself go.”

“You are here, so be here. Stay strong a little longer.

One day this pain will loosen its hold.”

Her words wrap around my sorrow,

Like warmth against winter air.

Not pity- not fragile sympathy-

But love that chooses to stay there.

So I write a line, then erase it,

Convincing myself no one cares.

I compare my pain to others,

And wonder why mine deserves prayers.

I tell myself I am not special,

Just another soul who survived.

A woman trying to hold together the shattered pieces left alive.

But somewhere beneath all the grieving,

A quieter voice speaks to me:

“Your story does not need perfection,

Only honesty to set it free.”

So I continue writing slowly,

Even when the words feel wrong.

Because someone hiding in darkness

May need these words to stay strong.

Maybe they are grieving deeply,

Maybe they are losing hope.

Maybe they feel forgotten too,

And are struggling every day to cope.

If I write my story honestly,

With the fear, the ache, the scars-

Maybe someone will keep breathing

After reading these wounded parts.

And perhaps that is the purpose,

Not fame, applause, or glory above.

But turning pain into connection,

And surviving long enough to love.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Memory Beneath the Poem

I can write about this pain now, but only a few months ago, I could not.

It felt as though waves of memories were slowly flooding my mind. I could never write quickly enough to capture them, so I tried to let them go as I always had. Usually, my deep-breathing exercises helped ease the memories, but this time, they did not.

So I wrote.

I wrote poem after poem and paragraph after paragraph because nothing inside me was willing to remain silent anymore.

I would sit at my desk and cry for everything I had lost—and for the parts of life I never had the opportunity to experience. There were moments when I desperately wanted to become bitter. Bitterness seemed easier than continuing to carry a tender heart through so much suffering.

Instead, adversity gave me something I did not expect: a compassionate heart and an instinct to care for others, sometimes before caring for myself.

I have walked through my own darkness for years, and I have watched members of my family and friends struggle through theirs—both psychologically and physically. Unfortunately, not everyone who shared parts of that journey is still here today.

That absence is another reason I write.

I cannot change everything that happened, nor can I promise that telling my story will heal someone. But perhaps writing honestly—and advocating for people living with illness and trauma—can help another person feel seen.

Perhaps someone hiding in their own darkness will find these words and understand that they are not the only ones trying to survive.

That is why I continue.

Not for fame.
Not for applause.
Not because I believe my story is more important than anyone else’s.

I write because pain can become connection.

I write because love chose to remain beside me.

And I write because somewhere, another wildflower may need a reason to stay strong a little longer.

So be here.

I worked with AI for several weeks to create this artistic interpretation for TikTok and Lemon8. I wanted it to resemble the hospital room I remember while allowing for a little theatrical imagination—because memory is rarely a perfect photograph. It holds shadows, symbols, fear, and fragments of light.

The room is not an exact reconstruction, but the emotions within it are real. I hope you enjoy seeing how I transformed one of my most painful memories into a piece of visual art.

Always and forever,

~Blynnwrites

A simple truth about this poem: it is painful.

I have rewritten this piece of an extended poem. I will share it later today. It's been available on Lemon8 and TikTok.

I am still mustering the courage to read it aloud to my readers. I hope that someday I will be able to make it through every line without crying.

For years, whenever I met someone new, they would eventually ask, “Tell me about yourself. What were you like when you were younger?”

I never knew how to answer.

Usually, I began with, “Well, there isn’t much to say. I was sick throughout my childhood until I received surgery a few days after my high school graduation.”

Sometimes, if they felt comfortable asking, they would say, “Would you mind telling me your story?”

No matter how many times I tell it, I still choke on the words. The feeling rises in my throat like a hot branding iron, warning me:

Enough.
Don’t do this to yourself.
These people don’t want to hear everything.
Stay quiet and move on.

As if I could really move on.

My father once told me, “You have a story. Write it. It may help someone heal.”

But during my recovery, I was built from so much self-doubt that nothing anyone said seemed capable of reaching me. I was wrapped in my suffering, constantly replaying traumatic images in my mind. I suffered in silence while moving through life like a shell of myself—looking okay from the outside while quietly falling apart within it.

This is the poem I wrote for that version of me.

It is who I am—raw and unrefined, carrying the heartache of surviving something that still haunts my waking life. But what happened to me does not define me.

I am more than what I went through.

This poem is about illness, self-doubt, and the moments I survived so that I could someday write about them.

As I continue working on my memoir, one memory returns more than the others. I hate this memory. I detest it because, during that moment, I saw myself through the eyes of my friends and parents.

I remember looking in the mirror and seeing a ghost staring back at me.

I knew in my heart that the people around me loved me. I knew they were there because they cared. But I saw their expressions when they looked at me, and I imagined what they must have seen:

Someone hollow.
Someone broken.
Someone who was no longer the strong person they remembered.

I walked hunched over, each step painfully slow. They had never seen me in that much pain before. In my traumatized mind, I could feel their uneasiness surrounding me. I worried that they did not want to be there, that each visit was merely a sympathy visit.

Whether that was true or not, it was how I felt.

That is why writing my memoir hurts in ways I cannot always explain. The trauma lingers like residue in my veins. It attaches itself to my heart and keeps me from telling the entire story at once.

So I do what I know how to do best.

I write.
I rewrite.
I delete.
And I begin again.

Sometimes, I fear that no combination of words will ever do my story justice. Perhaps that is also why I am writing this series about my poetry collection. By revealing these small truths one poem at a time, I can show that this book was not created entirely from pain and suffering.

There is love here, too. There is survival, mystery, imagination, and everything we wish we could say when the right words refuse to come.

At least, that is how my mind works.

I hope that one day someone will read my memoir—assuming I do not panic and delete everything I have written.

That would be especially unfortunate because I have already met an author who expressed interest in it.

This poetry book was a starting point. It helped me begin shaping my voice—not as a perfectly refined author, but as a writer sitting on the shoreline, preparing to expose parts of herself to anyone willing to understand how one person’s life can be shaped by love, self-doubt, heartache, and survival.

A photograph of the poem as it appears in Brandi Lynn Patino’s poetry book, In the Dark, We All Cry—a reflection on self-doubt, remembrance, and the hope that telling our stories might help someone else heal

To everyone living with the lasting effects of illness and medical trauma:

I see you.

Perhaps telling my story will help someone feel less alone. Perhaps one person will recognize their own grief, longing, or pain within my words.

I still do not know whether my story will become something people want to read.

But I am still here.

And I will continue to write it.

Always and forever,

~Blynnwrites