PaperweightSoul

His words fell on deaf ears and a cold heart.

[paperweightsoul]

superimposition

[ntrllghts]

Comfort

I can’t believe 

that night

I never wanted 

a fight

the whole time 

my heart was screaming:

“I just want to hold you tight

and ease your mind.”

If you’d let me now,

I’d never back down.

I know I’ve failed,

to love you well.

I caused you Pain,

put you through hell.

No wonder it’s hard 

no wonder you’re low

I just want you to know

I don’t want you to go.

Comfort 

in the midst of the pain 

to hear 

you say my name

like you don’t fear 

the choice to remain.

Will you let me hold you,

give yourself a break?

It’s fine to need space,

I just want you…

to breathe.

[paperweightsoul]

We found an old road 

with the lines worn thin

Map in the glove, 

coffee on wind

You hold the wheel like it might disappear

I said, “It’s a riiiver of sorts, 

and it’s all made of gears”

mirror’s full, of what we left behind

engine hums, like it knows our minds

Every stop sign feels like doubt 

But Every green’s a softer sound

I won’t tell you where to go

Just sit where you seeeee

If the night gets hard

I’ll be a streetlight, quietly

don’t have to drive perfeeect

You don’t have to driiive faaast

We’re learning how to move again

Without crashing in the past

The radio speaks, in weather and ghosts

Says there’s a storm where we’re headed most

You press the gas, then you pull away

Like the road might break if you choose to stay

We pass some houses that look like fear

With open doors and nobody here

You ask me what the signs all mean

I say, “They’re just suggestions, not guarantees”

If you forget which way is home

We’ll pull over, kill the lights

Let the dark teach us hope

By the dashboard lights

I don’t need you fearless

I just need you here

(eyes on the road)

Hands on the wheel, 

Keep Breathing through the fear

drive it slow through the maybe-land

Past the wrecks and might-have-beens

If you lose control, I’ll understand

I’ve been learning to comfort you

And not force your hand.

don’t need a destination

Just a line that bends

I’ll be the seat beside doubt

While you learn to begin

(I’ll teach you to drive)

(I’ll teach you to……. Drive)

[ntrllghts]

Through walls unseen, I stay near, quietly unwavering.

[ntrllghts]

[ntrllghts]

[ntrllghts]

God does not erase pain by denying it.

He steps into it,

shoulders what we cannot carry,

and calls that mercy.

Two truths breathe in the same space:

sorrow is permitted for a season,

and healing is already promised.

Like a dream split in half,

one side night,

the other morning.

His way with suffering is not correction,

but compassion.

Not distance,

but nearness.

Not silence,

but staying.

Grief wears many faces:

sharp edges of irritability,

closed doors of withdrawal,

a fading warmth,

a mind that cannot find its way back.

To bear a burden means:

I will not turn away when you are heavy.

I will not measure your worth by your strength.

I will remain when the weight bends you.

I am learning that love is not the art of fixing pain

or fleeing from it.

Love is the courage to remain inside it with another.

So this is how I want to love you,

the way God loves people:

not leaving when the days are dense,

not shielding myself first,

but standing beside you

even when I have no solution,

no script,

no perfect words,

only presence.

[ntrllghts]

You carved your name into the softest parts,

Left fingerprints across my heart.

I pretend I can rise above,

But I’m bleeding from the cost of love.

I hear your voice echo in the street,

Like your ghost won’t release its grip on me.

Cause you and I,

Were nothing but thieves.

[ntrllghts]

While you sleep

I used to trace the lines of your hands when you slept, careful not to wake you, letting my fingers linger as if memorizing the warmth that belonged to you.

You’d murmur in your sleep, half annoyed, half pleased, and I’d hold myself still from moving too close, though every instinct urged me to.

Lately, I hesitate even to reach.

Your hands retreat from mine before I even touch them, stiff and distant like a landscape I no longer know.

And sometimes I catch myself smiling at the thought of that distance,

like a cruel experiment running on both of us, as it cuts even deeper.

I try to close the gap anyway,

leaning in, whispering your name in the spaces between us, hoping to melt the cold you’ve been carrying. But the warmth doesn’t return, and I can’t tell if it was yours or mine that failed first.

Not that it matters

it just hurts without end.

You ask why I haven’t been sleeping. Honestly, it’s this:

I don’t grieve what should have been, I ache for what now is.

I know you’re someone worth my everything that’s why I chose you. And though I’ve stumbled once or twice, I never meant to be the one who hurt you.

[ntrllghts]

I miss knowing what’s inside you. I guess, now I don’t get to.

Not for something I did, or didn’t do.

You’ve closed off that part of you.

-ntrllghts

[ntrllghts]

“Korae joined him at the doorway, 

her hand slipping easily into his. 

She rested her head against his shoulder, and together they looked out at the quiet evidence of their staying.

They had not measured time in years.

They had measured it in harvests.

In storms endured side by side.

In nights where silence was enough.

Their closeness had not dimmed.

It had learned to breathe.

Where once they had leaned toward one another in discovery, 

now they leaned in habit, 

habit born not of boredom, 

but of belonging. 

They moved through their days like two notes that had learned how to share a melody without losing their own sound.

They worked together.”

Excerpt From Movement Ten

Achael & Korae: The Pursuer and the Beloved

[ntrllghts]

Exile

[paperweightsoul]

I’m failing at something I’m not even allowed to see.

Like you have a destination in mind but keep the map in the glovebox.

[paperweightsoul]

Was it time and circumstance

or was it something I said?

Could we ever be us again

or is the willingness to love dead?

My desire for you is

one thing you will never forget.

[ntrllghts]

I’d like to read your mind 

And pick some place in time

We could rendezvous

I’d make a space for you

With me.

[paperweightsoul]

My heart is living in memory, 

while life is stuck in reality.

There’s a kind of mourning happening in me, even though no one has died. 

I’m grieving what I thought we had 

and that grief doesn’t get rituals 

or sympathy 

or even closure

It just sits inside.

With no where to go

So it tares at my soul

And drains my blood.

I don’t want to keep bleeding in silence

Wish you would come and bind me up.

[paperweightsoul]

I hear you hum 

Under your breath 

The softest melody 

One I Could never forget