safire's syrup

serene.

[oatleaf]

Oatleaf Poetry Magazine's August 2025 Competition Winner

We are pleased to announce the winner of Oatleaf's August 2025 Competition!

Something More by Safire Syrup.

Editor's Note: Congratulations to Safire Syrup for winning this month's competition!

[safiresyrup]

everything feels like

just as it should be

everything feels like

a strange goblet of light

descended from the skies and into the pool of life

And it feels as though

nothing ever existed before this

a tender whisper awakens the moment

where truth prevails

[safiresyrup]

there exists this quiet, teasing acknowledgement that there is reality and vastness, glory

time drifts slowly, decorating what's saddened by its past

mercifully embroidering the future

[safiresyrup]

She tries in the glimmering, fading morning

to recover

what dies in cold forewarning

to discover

what her diamond mind seeks forever

[safiresyrup]

I remember the future

And destiny

a clear record, written, preserved

before time

existed

once the soul catches the scent of it,

there is nothing that can extinguish the truth

[safiresyrup]

if you could see

what goes on

in the unseen

when a prayer is made

you would never stop

[safiresyrup]

know it

know this

and taste it, how light

and beauty remain and endure

The most transient in this world are the clouds

the thunder strikes, birthing fear,

birthing county lines and crumbling mountains

But know this, how beauty

and light resist

And great joy persists, yes, know this.

[safiresyrup]

please

I cry

put it all down on the bathroom floor

I love this much more than the other things

that people do

I hate everything

I don’t want nothing

I am content in serenity and

white oceans

full of life and presence

something different than something more

is there escape from this room

My heart reeks of

something

what is it

it won’t come out but

If it could, would it even matter?

[safiresyrup]

Beauty, glory, and dreams. I think that’s all I believe in. Whatever is broken is still sparkling. Whatever leaves enhances my freedom. Whatever I want searches for me. All we live for is beauty, can’t you see it? 

[safiresyrup]

i want nothing more

Than everything

Everything faintly remembers its primal state and

natural instincts

of stardust, glitter, priceless beauty

Expansiveness of a single cosmic heart

that beats forever

[safiresyrup]

tears warm and soft

come down, all that you ever ask for

Is birthed in unseen worlds

in paths

in coincidences

in time leaps

all surmounting to a timeless certainty

Precious sadness

profound hope

[safiresyrup]

Beauty glory pure dreams

Everything you believe in lives for beauty

we all live for it, how it hearkens back to familiar times

Of a simple dream and the sounds of discord

peaking through the black night

[safiresyrup]

Fresh heaven, floral forests, sudden thoughts of roses

Everyday, I’m reminded of things I’ve amended

faith fluctuates quietly on tired winter eves

Breathe in coolness and tell yourself

you must believe

and all that scatters around you

Or flows or dances or whatever it may

will remind you softly

of what you will one day see

[safiresyrup]

why would I have thought it would be any other way

The world is not meant to be heartache with no beautiful mountain to compensate plot twists that beam the light of the one who wrote them

Surprises that leave the soul’s most sacred eyes

in a trance.

[safiresyrup]

hello

you live in my poems so deeply entrenched

and all of the rhythms that dance are well kept

in our minds, like a sentence of death

[safiresyrup]

don't feel nothing

just go sit around

just my brand new rifle, you're just my very favorite

you're just the one that heightens all my

senses

and disarms every guard of my past

two, three, more years down the line and I will

return to the movies a mind as

bored as mine could make up

about a desert, a place whose tears turn into city lights

[safiresyrup]

spare me your iron,

Shield and sword that dropped at once at our feet

Once we had nothing to lose, nothing to gain or compete

Just this, just that, just here, and just for now.