Tending to the pulse

When I say tend to the pulse, I mean staying present with what’s alive — the fragile, rhythmic proof of being human. Writing becomes a kind of caregiving: a way to listen closely to pain, to witness it without turning away, and to keep it company until it softens. By writing about my own pain and the act of caregiving, I hope to honor my patients, myself, and anyone who has carried or been carried through suffering. Every poem becomes a small act of tending: to memory, to grief, to the heartbeat that connects us.

[literaryvein]

L. V., excerpts from the afterword

[merynyvalics]

Once a human gets a sip of what they want, just a tiny taste, like the first sip of coffee, everything changes. That fleeting flavor is enough to convince them that nothing and no one can prove them wrong.

No one is born knowing who they are or what they want from this life. We learn through experiences, the sweet ones that feel like light, and the terrible ones that carve us open. We meet people, those who truly like us, and those who only pretend to, at least for a moment. And then there are our thoughts, the most dangerous enemy of all.

Imagine being trapped inside a memory that once felt like everything you ever wished for, a memory you held so tightly that you built a whole world around it. And then, one day, you discover it never existed. It was never real, never seen, never introduced to this world. What a quiet, cruel disappointment.

Maybe it could be continued...

~ Mery

[paper-wounds]

[tendingtothepulse]

Just Right

You should know loving me means goodbyes are never casual. They are rituals. Every kiss is a negotiation with gravity. Every phone call is a séance where I have to hang up in a way that convinces the universe you’ll survive the night. Sometimes you laugh at how many times I say goodnight. I don’t tell you each repetition is me hiding another sharp object from fate’s pocket. You should know I will kiss you like a proofreader. I will rewrite it until the sentence feels safe. And if I pull you back for the third, or fourth, or fifth draft, it isn’t because I doubt your love, it’s because I doubt the laws of physics, I doubt the generosity of God, I doubt the thin thread that ties your heartbeat to this moment. You should know I envy how you walk out the door like the air doesn’t need to be measured. Meanwhile, I’m still there, counting the hinges, asking the room to promise me it won’t swallow you,  begging the door to not become the last one I see you go through  Sometimes, I want to tell you that my OCD is less about germs and more about grief I haven’t met yet. It’s a guard dog that only barks at shadows. It’s me bargaining with the universe, trying to write you into tomorrow. And sometimes, I fear your patience thinning, like the wick of a candle burning toward silence. I want to hand you my chest, let you feel the way my heart races every time the goodbye feels crooked, the way my ribs tighten when the last kiss sounds unfinished. You should know I don’t need you to fix it. I just need you to believe me when I say the rituals aren’t who I am, they are the way I keep holding you. And if I ever tell you, I promise you I’m not crazy, I know it’s stupid  what I really mean is please don’t leave before the last goodbye lands just right.

[tendingtothepulse]

Spring Returned

She was a nightingale born with ink on her tongue, every note a poem trying to outrun silence. Readers adored the way she could turn suffering into something that sounded almost like hope. But wings grow tired when every flight is away from yourself. And applause is a cold fire when no one hears the ache beneath. Each stanza she wrote stole a little more warmth from her bones a trade she never meant to make, but art is a greedy god. Winter crept in, quiet as self-doubt. Branches that once lifted her grew brittle beneath her weight. She searched for a verse that could hold her together a single line strong enough to sing her through the dark. But the words would not come. And so the night claimed her voice not with thunder, not with drama just a soft closing of wings. Spring returned, too late to hear the song she never finished. And the world called her brilliant, never realizing brilliance was what broke her

[tendingtothepulse]

The Gods Were There

Thanatos arrived first, not in shadows, but sitting quietly at the edge of her bed like someone who understands what exhaustion really means. No scythe, no terror just a hand extended in recognition. Hades waited further off, in the corner of the room, eyes downcast as though it hurt him to be seen. He knows what it is to govern sorrow, to hold the unholdable. They did not summon her. They simply didn’t turn her away. Every breath had become a battlefield, every thought a blade she couldn’t drop. She tried so long to be mortal about it to wake up, to stay, to keep holding on to a burning rope. But her palms were ash. She didn’t want an ending. She wanted a place where the mind stopped screaming that she was the problem. Thanatos leaned closer, whispering not seduction, but relief: Rest is not a crime. Hades god of all unloved decisions opened his hands, not to take, but to catch what was falling. He looked at her with the gaze of someone who has watched millions break under the weight of being alive. You’ve fought enough, was the silence between them. That night, there were no monsters, no divine decrees only a girl too tired to keep breathing against her own mind. When she stepped forward, it wasn’t a leap into myth, but the softest collapse into two gods who understood why she could not continue.

[tendingtothepulse]

Rapture Her eyes drift skyward, tracking angels I cannot see, and I am left with a mother made of absence, a voice threaded through scripture and the hollow hum of waiting. I try to speak, to bring her back to the table,, to the small, messy room where we once belonged. But she is carried elsewhere, by a heaven that has stolen her from me, and I mourn her presence as if it has already passed, aching for a mother who lives only in the waiting.

[tendingtothepulse]

What the Birds Told Me

They blame me for the nests lost, the small wings stilled but the sparrows landed first. They brought their songs into my arms, and I held them too tight. Is it my fault that loneliness constricts? That love, unchecked, can darken the canopy? Every death I’ve witnessed is a red-stained prayer: don’t leave. I would give anything to learn a softer way to keep what I cherish.

[tendingtothepulse]

A Place to Root

If someone loved me on purpose poured water at my feet, guided my reach, said here, just here I could be beautiful. I could drape summer without smothering it, lay shade like a blessing across the porch steps. I would trade all the miles I’ve conquered for one square yard where I am wanted. I have seen gardens where roses are fed praise and trimmed with kindness. Imagine what I could be if someone cared enough to teach me boundaries instead of punish my hunger. Until then, I am a tenderness unclaimed a love that only knows how to hold on.

[tendingtothepulse]

Kudzu’s Wish

It never meant to take the house. It only wanted something to hold. No one invites it. No one kneels in the dirt and whispers stay. They say it was careless, a green mistake imported south, a problem tangled in sunlight. They curse the way it reaches every stretch mistaken for greed, each leaf a trespass. But the kudzu loves the way it knows how: with every limb, with every soft insistence that the world is close enough to touch. It climbs the porch rail the way a child holds tight to the hand that never asked for holding. And when the pruning shears come, it does not hate the hands that cut— it only grieves the emptiness after, the ghost of a fence it once embraced. If someone—just once— looked at its wild persistence and called it welcome, asked it to linger, to soften a lonely corner of the yard… It would still grow, yes but gentle, learn the shape of home without swallowing it whole. Until then, it keeps reaching, hoping affection doesn’t always have to be invasive, and that love is not measured by what you let go, but by who asks you to stay.

[tendingtothepulse]

Kudzu They planted me to keep the earth from slipping a green solution to someone else’s fear. I swallowed the slope like a promise: I will hold you. Sun praised me first, coaxing lush hunger from every cell. I learned that thriving was the one thing asked of me. Now, each new inch is a testament to that early encouragement grow, and grow, and don’t you dare stop. How strange that the world calls me invasive when I’m only doing what I was taught.