pretty little drafts

a record of how it feels to be here, if you want to read it | 30s she/her

[prettylittledrafts]

Wave

My sorrow is not a verdict,

just a wave I have to bear.

It rises, falls, and breaks apart,

but still, I learn to care.

With every breath, my beating heart

is choosing one more day.

I do not need to feel like hope

to prove I want to stay.

[thehopefulquotes]

“I hope you fall in love with someone who never lets you fall asleep thinking you’re unwanted.”

— Unknown

[prettylittledrafts]

dormant

still it lives

something buried deep

beneath the leaf fall of seasons

stirs

a root

remembering water

the old sorrow

unfurls its pale bloom

threading itself

through the dark soil of the body

until its bitter flower

opens in the throat

and every breath

carries its pollen deeper

the years fold closed

and all the grief

I thought the earth had taken

rises singing

[prettylittledrafts]

The River

One day glass,

one day floodwater.

The river between us

swallows every word meant for you.

I kneel at its edge,

watching the current carry away

the compass from my chest,

the key to your voice,

every answer I thought I had.

The reeds bow and rise,

bow and rise,

as if practicing goodbye.

Above us,

the dusk gathers blue bruises

and paints them into the sky.

Still, if winter asks for one more leaf,

I would give it mine.

If the night asks for one more star,

I would loosen one from my ribs.

And if morning carries you

to some far shore beyond my seeing,

I will still thank the river

for knowing where to take you.

[prettylittledrafts]

An Old Belief

I am tired of surviving

my own thoughts.

They keep building rooms

inside my head,

and every room contains

a smaller room.

Somewhere at the center,

I find myself again,

curled around an old belief:

that I am a burden people carry

until they can set me down.

So I spend my days

taking up less space.

Guessing.

Apologizing.

Trying.

And every night,

the same fear returns,

whispering that

no matter how hard I try,

I am one mistake away

from giving everyone

a reason to leave.

[prettylittledrafts]

Sweet Dreams

You memorize the constellations

scattered across my shoulders;

name each one,

they belong to you.

A whispered thought,

barely louder than breath,

and suddenly

the whole sky tilts.

You cook,

I linger in the kitchen doorway,

pretending not to stare

at the gold flecks in your eyes,

gathering light.

A favorite show plays,

your head rests in my lap,

my hands wander through your hair,

and the evening suspends,

unwilling to end.

Outside, the stars keep turning.

Inside, I drift among them.

[prettylittledrafts]

Empty

If love came back now,

it would find the house abandoned.

It would knock softly. It would call my name.

It would stand in the garden long after dark,

listening to the leaves drag over stone.

But grief lives there now,

having changed the locks while I slept.

Every floorboard answers to its weight.

Sometimes I think one honest confession from you

could still unbar the windows.

Instead, dust drifts through the late afternoon,

soft as snowfall.

The mirrors forget their purpose,

and I grow less certain they were ever meant for light.

[prettylittledrafts]

Splinters

Loss lingers longest in the blue hour wreckage,

when the house goes still

and every small sound seems sacred with meaning.

The mind turns slowly there, water

circling a darkened well, asking again

whether remorse can ripen into repair,

whether ruined things remember

the shape they held before the breaking.

Some nights, hope spills through rain-streaked glass,

silvering the edges of grief.

Some nights, the ache itself feels endless,

a thorn pressed deep beneath velvet ribbon.

Always, the heart keeps vigil in the dark,

wanting the wound to be worthy of mending,

wanting love to return not merely weeping,

but willing to kneel among the splinters

and gather them gently, one by one.

[prettylittledrafts]

One Closed Window

Scarcity is not the sorrow.

Selection is.

Outside, whole gardens climb toward summer.

Windows glow honey-warm at dusk.

Devotion moves toward me

without needing to be begged.

Open hands.

Easy laughter drifting close at midnight.

You’re quite charming.

Beautiful.

So much wanting in the world,

and none of it rare.

Yet none of it means enough.

The heart stays fixed

on the one closed window,

the one cold room,

where love turns its face away

as if beauty were not already burning there.

[prettylittledrafts]

teach me how

will I wake up one day

and no longer want you?

you folded our afternoons

like paper cranes

I keep a small fleet

in the drawer of my ribs,

each one waits

with fragile wings, how

did you do it?

the question’s a stone

that won’t sink,

you taught the tide

to forget the prints it leaves, how

I watch the shoreline of myself

smooth where you walked,

I learn that some waves

will not return, how

did you erase me

and move on?

teach me how.

you made leaving look

like a lantern set down low

I sit with the ash

of our promises in my hands,

trying to learn

the lightness of letting go, how

[prettylittledrafts]

I wrote this almost a year ago and I still don’t know how.

[prettylittledrafts]

Desperate

I rehearse restraint

hold your name behind my teeth

let minutes wilt untouched beside your words

pretend I am the kind of woman

who does not wait at the window

counting headlights like prayer candles

but beneath all my practiced silence, I

want to want you ruinously

moon-drenched and longing

to crawl inside your open ribcage like ivy after rain

let the whole starving cathedral of me

ring its bells without shame

never made

to quiet them

[prettylittledrafts]

One After Another

The bench was damp with coming rain.

I tried to read Sylvia Plath,

though the morning kept slipping

from my hands.

A spider wandered over the words

one after another.

Always gentle with living things, I

lifted it away with my bookmark,

a small slip of Gustav Klimt gold

held out like a bridge

back into the world.

Somewhere in the distance, thunder

dragged its hem across the sky,

and all the while

another disappointment made its place in me

so quietly

I almost called it nothing.

That is the terrible thing,

the endless procession

of lesser sorrows

arriving soft-footed as spiders,

each one so slight

it would sound foolish spoken aloud,

until at last the heart is buried beneath them,

one after another.

[prettylittledrafts]

Even Then

Air tore through me clean as a blade.

My mind, already fevered,

opened every locked room at once.

Panic has a talent for making eternity

out of a few ruined seconds.

I thought you would come after me.

Even then,

I thought you would come after me.

The water,

black blue, bridal, merciless,

gathering me in with both hands.

I struck it hard enough to come apart.

Hard enough to stop calling this fear

and call it reality.

Below the surface, acceptance was not peace.

It was only the body giving up its argument.

Only the lungs learning

what sorrow weighs.

Still, with the light thinning over me,

with the deep taking hold at my ankles,

I thought you would come after me.

Even then,

I thought you would come after me.

[prettylittledrafts]

The Same Wound

Raised by something loud,

sharp, and leaving,

abandoned at different distances.

He learned that love is something you lose,

so he keeps it quiet,

at the edges of the room.

She learned that love is something that hurts,

so she goes looking for it there,

soft hands reaching for sharp things.

He pulls away

because he’s afraid of being left.

She reaches

because she already has been.

And somewhere in between,

his silence cuts clean through her,

her closeness is too quick, too much

for him to survive,

circling the same wound

from opposite sides.

Isn’t he the same,

pushing away the people who love him?

Isn’t she the same,

following the familiar fracture,

chasing the pain?

[prettylittledrafts]

I can let myself be sad without questioning my worth.

[prettylittledrafts]

Rejection Exposure Therapy

I keep returning to you

as if your absence were a shoreline,

letting the cold water take my ankles

again and again

until I no longer gasp.

I tell myself this is how I grow,

learning how to stand in it,

letting the pain wash through me

like pale morning light.

Some nights

I miss the simple mercy

of warmth that stays,

and wonder

why becoming stronger

feels so much like becoming alone.

[prettylittledrafts]

deep cleaning

a note, worn at the folds

your name still warm in my hands

a photograph catching light

remembering how to glow

for a moment, something in me

leans toward you

I leave it where it is

behind the couch, the air goes stale

dust lifting

dry on my tongue

short, curled hairs caught

where nothing should stay

and just like that, the room

comes back to me