Holly🖋️

author, poet, dreamer of a better world ❤️‍🔥 authorhollyamberwebb.com

[authorhollyamberwebb]

Hi friends!

I'll be honest, I have not used Tumblr consistently since 2018, but with the rise of fascism and the oligarchy being so prevalent on the other Meta apps, I've found myself drawn back to Tumblr. Call it nostalgia, call it a yearning to get back to my roots. This app is where my radicalization began, and I would like to continue that journey here by sharing my poetry with you all. 🥰

Since it has been so long, let me reintroduce myself! I'm Holly (she/they), and I am a non-binary writer based out of New York City. I have been writing poetry since 2014, but have only been committed to it seriously in these past three years. I have published two poetry books, titled "Am I the Villain?" and "From the River to the Sea: Poetry for a Free Palestine". I am currently sharing my third exclusively on substack, titled "Letters to a Lover I Have Yet to Meet". All is linked below! ✨

Holly Webb: books, biography, latest update

Follow Holly Webb and explore their bibliography from Amazon's Holly Webb Author Page.

Holly’s Substack | Author Holly Amber Webb | Substack

Personal blog, poetry, and more. Click to read Holly’s Substack, by Author Holly Amber Webb, a Substack publication. Launched 9 months ago.

I am also in the process of getting my fantasy romance book published, and can share more info on that later! 🐉

I plan to start using my Tumblr regularly and posting my poetry here, and I'm curious how you prefer to consume poetry:

answer here:

through spoken word

through reading it

Voting ended onMar 18, 2025

This poll will help me to determine how I want to post my poetry here on Tumblr! 🖋️

I'm also on Instagram, TikTok and rednote under the same username if you'd like to access my older poetry. ❤️‍🔥

I think that's all for now! Thank you friends! And for the algorithm, here's pictures of me and my cat, Walter 😻

[authorhollyamberwebb]

"They give us half a life and think we won't fight for it." - Severance

My brain feels torn in two sometimes:

The person I am at work, and the person I truly am.

At work, I am a subdued version of myself,

A watered down personality

Lukewarm smiles

As I slowly wither under the florescent light.

I'm only there to fund my art, my true calling,

But each day chips a little more from me.

The cracks are still small,

And I am keeping a close eye for the first signs of crumbling.

It is sickening that a person's ability to receive healthcare is tied to a job.

It is disgusting that water and food (things that are naturally produced for us by the planet we live on)

Are not free and likely expensive.

I see red when I think of the hundreds of thousands of empty houses in the US,

That could house the homeless.

I am stuck in a system I did not ask to be a part of,

But I'll show up tomorrow, 9 am and punctual.

As if I ever had a choice.

This is an original poem of mine ❤️‍🔥 Comment your favorite line below! If you liked this poem, check out my two poetry books in my b*i*o!

[authorhollyamberwebb]

It is hilarious to me that these kings of capitalism

Think that money is an immortal entity,

As if money isn't just paper stamped with dead presidents,

As if the increasing upswing of profit

Doesn't realize it has farther and farther to fall,

As if these chopping blocks aren't already being fitted for these king's necks.

This is an original poem of mine ❤️‍🔥 Comment your favorite line below! If you liked this poem, check out my two poetry books in my b*i*o!

[authorhollyamberwebb]

I stand in the spot you first kissed me in the spring,

celebrating when I broke up with you with a glass of champagne.

You have no power over me.

Not anymore.

This is an original poem of mine ❤️‍🔥 Comment your favorite line below! If you liked this poem, check out my two poetry books in my b*i*o!

[authorhollyamberwebb]

You ripped out of my life easily.

Easy like a root canal,

Easy like doing back-taxes,

Easy like the equations needed to send humans beyond our solar system.

You were this enormous thing,

A red giant demanding everyone orbit around you,

Named after an obscure god and not just a sequence of letters and numbers.

In the myths surrounding you,

You had these hounds of justice.

Trained to smell the first whiff of bullshit.

Your hounds were well-trained, you said.

Thirty something years of experience.

they were top of the line,

bred generations to pick up the scent.

Suddenly, your hounds were trained on me,

Barking incessantly,

After I brought up the truth and

Dared to question your reign.

A deflection tactic, I realized later.

How ironic that your hounds never led you to a mirror.

This is an original poem of mine ❤️‍🔥 Comment your favorite line below! If you liked this poem, check out my two poetry books in my b*i*o!

[authorhollyamberwebb]

I have always been acquainted with death.

Being born to older parents,

I was always attending a funeral on the weekends,

For a cousin I never knew the name of,

An aunt twice removed,

A great great grandmother that had carried my DNA in her long before she knew of my existence.

I was wrangled into black dresses and frilly socks and shiny shoes,

And death was always there, warmer and closer than my own mother,

Holding my hand and explaining to me the logistics of it.

Death had never been a scary, foreign concept, some far away monster that would someday snatch me out of bed.

Death was a gentle creature, an angel of mercy.

I played with death in the side yards of funeral homes long before I was taught to fear her.

I knew her soft entity before my own body grew into its adult form,

when I still had permanently scabbed knees and dirt underneath my fingernails and wide doe eyes, still innocent,

Even in the face of death,

Her first friend.

This is an original poem of mine ❤️‍🔥 Comment your favorite line below! If you liked this poem, check out my two poetry books in my b*i*o!

[authorhollyamberwebb]

Not to sound like your therapist,

But you need to go outside and touch grass.

Look, the daffodils are unfolding!

That means that Persephone has returned from the Underworld,

And Demeter is no longer angry, she's just relieved to see her one precious daughter.

You can taste the forgiveness in the pollen, gently guarded by the buttery petals.

There's always relief, and there's always forgiveness, but you must experience the anger first.

There is no other way,

But it is the most rewarding.

Spring has come,

And now your worries seem trivial in the sun's warm cheek kisses.

This is an original poem of mine ❤️‍🔥 Comment your favorite line below! If you liked this poem, check out my two poetry books in my b*i*o!

[authorhollyamberwebb]

Have you ever pleasured yourself with poetry?

I have.

It feels like nectar,

Like a god himself is taking his sweet time.

Sucking similes off my fingers,

Opening odes in my throat

As I moan with metaphors.

If I may be so bold-

No, fuck it. I am bold.

If you're not pleasuring yourself poetically,

Then you're really missing out.

This is an original poem of mine ❤️‍🔥 Comment your favorite line below! If you liked this poem, check out my two poetry books in my b*i*o!

[authorhollyamberwebb]

Does choosing yourself ever get easier?

I forgot to cage your corpse in its coffin.

I shoveled the dirt over you,

Yet here you are,

A vampire lurking at the shadows of my mind.

I could exorcise you permanently from my life,

But vampires have always been my favorite. You've always been my favorite.

The way you exsanguinated my body was romantic, each pull of your mouth a love letter to me.

I have an abandonmeht wound, so of course I found that appealing. Of course I thought that was love.

Do I love you, or do I want to be chosen by you?

This is an original poem of mine ❤️‍🔥 Comment your favorite line below! If you liked this poem, check out my two poetry books in my b*i*o!

[authorhollyamberwebb]

Are we doomed to spend an eternity playing starcrossed lovers on the worlds stage?

We keep reincarnating and never figure out the solution,

As Beast and Beauty,

While all the while choosing to see the man beneath the monster,

As Phantom and Christine,

Dragging me down through your caves in my white dress to sing for you like your caged bird,

As Juliet seeing Romeo through that blue fish tank, him finally seeing God in a girl's mortal form.

It's always us,

And I think the universe is telling me that. But why?

I asked Spotify to divine the meaning in the order of songs it gave me,

And it presented our personal Greek Tragedy,

Where showmance developed to something cosmic and ten years later, I'm still not the same.

This is an original poem of mine ❤️‍🔥 Comment your favorite line below! If you liked this poem, check out my two poetry books in my b*i*o!

[authorhollyamberwebb]

In this poem, I am the owl swallowing the mouse. 

I'm this line, I am the mouse being squeezed down the owls gullet.

In this sonnet, I am the wolf, licking my lips in anticipation.

In this prose, I am the lamb, naive to the danger approaching. 

In this stanza, I am the hunter.

In this punctuation, I am the hunted.

In this metaphor, I am the male gaze.

In this allegory, I am a woman, my own voyeur.

In this ode, I am the poem.

And in this example, I am the poet. 

I am nothing and I am all.

A paradox, an oxymoron, 

a story's ingenue wrapped in quantum physics. 

Observe me, and watch me awaken. 

This is an original poem of mine ❤️‍🔥 Comment your favorite line below! If you liked this poem, check out my two poetry books in my b*i*o!

[authorhollyamberwebb]

I finally cry for you on a Sunday.

The churches are packed today,

 but I'm at my own altar, 

Accepting the things I cannot change. 

A philosopher said once that the people who leave your life are not meant to come with you on your next journey, 

And I think that's true of all things, 

And this thing too. 

I'm finally breaking down, hanging my wet laundry to dry 

While pictures of us watch me, your glossy eyes 

So full of joy in the times we were together.

You weren't meant to come with me on my next journey, 

But no one told me that. 

I set a place for you at the table, 

But the universe told me that they didn't send out your invitation. 

I understand, I do,

But that doesn't stop me from staring at your empty seat, 

The glass of wine untouched, 

Your food growing cold,

Your nameplate unclaimed.

This is an original poem of mine ❤️‍🔥 Comment your favorite line below! If you liked this poem, check out my two poetry books in my b*i*o!

[authorhollyamberwebb]

I still dream about you, seven years later.

Do I frequent your dreams like you do mine?

You are a frequent flyer there,

A first class spot in my subconscious

Because my time with you continues to shape everything I do.

In this dream, we were rehearsing our fairytale,

Then living it,

Then you fed me the poison apple,

Stabbed my with my own slipper,

Forced my finger onto that spindle

So I would dream of you for the next hundred years.

After all this time, I am still surprised when our dream turns into a nightmare.

Our ending was never supposed to be happy.

I know that now, but I will never stop wondering

What our Happily Ever After

Could have looked like.

This is an original poem of mine ❤️‍🔥 Comment your favorite line below! If you liked this poem, check out my two poetry books in my b*i*o!

[authorhollyamberwebb]

In a park full of men,

A woman I do not know sits next to me.

We don't talk or even look at each other,

But her presence makes me feel safer.

I can breathe easier next to her.

Women don't need saved by men,

Women need saved from men,

And it is other women who will not only save, but protect us.

This poem is for the woman in the park.

I do not know who you are,

But you made me breathe easier.

This is an original poem of mine ❤️‍🔥 Comment your favorite line below! If you liked this poem, check out my two poetry books in my b*i*o!

[authorhollyamberwebb]

Human ages magnifies to four thousand times look like a universe,

With its own stars, clusters, and purple gaseous nebulas.

We are the universe experiencing itself.

A writer writing the first book they will ever read,

A biologist counting the suckers on its own tentacles,

A pebble being presented to their own penguin wife as an act of dedication,

A fungus sprouting from its ant body,

A speck of dust floating through everything and nothing,

Nothingly everything.

If that is not a poem,

I don't know what is.

This is an original poem of mine ❤️‍🔥 Comment your favorite line below! If you liked this poem, check out my two poetry books in my b*i*o!

[authorhollyamberwebb]

Silly girl,

Don't you see?

All of it, is

P o e t r y

This is an original poem of mine ❤️‍🔥 Comment your favorite line below! If you liked this poem, check out my two poetry books in my b*i*o!

[authorhollyamberwebb]

Walking up swathed in spider silk

Poolside dreams

Where does your Venus line lay?

Beaching boardwalks

finding the shine along the sand

The perfection of this day

A photo strip prophecy

Of the sparkling summer to come

This is an original poem of mine ❤️‍🔥 Comment your favorite line below! If you liked this poem, check out my two poetry books in my b*i*o!