A girl who searches for meaning, not direction 🌻

Romanticizing life in golden hours and hidden paths, in waves that touch the soul, rivers that carry dreams, and forest walks that feel like lullabies. A heart that wanders, but always in wonder.

[thedreamerinthewoods]

All the poems and quotes are my own. I also take a lot of photos, but I don’t draw. The images I place above my poems are from Pinterest. You’re more than welcome to use my original work (poems, quotes, and photos) 🩷

[thedreamerinthewoods]

Painted by the seasons.

She is not painted by hands of glass and powder,

not carved by brushes of borrowed light

but slowly,

softly,

by the patient seasons that remember her name.

Spring finds her first in silence.

White skin learning the language of warmth,

blushing like petals that never asked permission to bloom.

A quiet rose unfolding beneath the sun’s gentle insistence.

And then summer comes closer,

and she begins to change without ever becoming someone else.

Her lips,

once pale promises

turn into the color of ripe dusk,

as if the horizon has decided to rest upon her smile.

Her hair forgets its winter shadow,

lightening like wheat kissed by golden wind,

as though sunlight itself has chosen to stay tangled in it.

Her skin does not darken,

but remembers the earth softly

a warm, tender tan,

like honey touched by afternoon light,

never too much, never too little,

just enough to belong to the world.

And her eyes,

brown, but never ordinary

catch every fragment of sky they pass,

shimmering as if the sea has briefly looked back at itself in her gaze.

She does not wear makeup.

She wears time.

She wears weather.

She wears the quiet devotion of sun and salt and wind

as they take turns

painting her

into something the mirror cannot quite explain.

And still, she remains

entirely herself

as if nature, in all its changing colors,

was only ever trying to find her.

[thedreamerinthewoods]

"Where the Storm Learns Their Names"

They meet like storms disguised as people

too dangerous to touch,

too beautiful to avoid.

He wants her like a vow

not spoken, but carved into bone,

something ancient and unforgiving.

“If you are not mine,”

his silence says,

“then may the world

never learn how to keep you warm.”

And there is something in him

something dark, something holy

that would rather see her alone,

cold, untouched, unraveling in quiet ruin

than safe in someone else’s hands.

Because love, to him,

is not gentle.

It is possession.

It is ruin.

It is the need

to be the only place she belongs.

But she

she was raised on wanting.

On having the world bend at her fingertips,

on never hearing “no” without consequence.

So when he reaches for her,

she does not soften.

She sharpens.

She turns her longing into frost,

her desire into distance

a blade hidden behind perfect posture,

a glance that wounds more than a touch ever could.

And he feels it.

Every inch of her cruelty

is a language he cannot stop reading.

Every cold word

is a kiss that never landed.

She denies him

not because she feels nothing

but because she feels too much

and would rather burn the world

than admit she is not the one in control.

So they circle each other

like a curse dressed as destiny

pulling closer,

destroying faster.

And those who stand too near

they do not watch love grow.

They witness something worse.

A storm that does not pass.

A hunger that does not end.

A story that consumes

anyone

foolish enough

to believe

they could survive it.

[thedreamerinthewoods]

“A Fire She Wears in Silence”

She walks like winter

quiet, composed, untouchable,

a cathedral of stillness

where no one hears the screaming.

But beneath

oh, beneath

there is a wildfire

licking the bones of her ribs,

spelling his name in smoke

against the walls of her chest.

She is promised to a life

stitched in careful lines,

pressed and ironed by gentle hands

that never dared to burn.

And yet

he exists.

Like a forbidden sun

she cannot help but orbit,

blinding, relentless

too close to survive,

too far to ever be held.

Their eyes meet in borrowed moments,

thin as glass,

sharp as truth

and she drinks him in

like a sin she refuses to confess.

No touch.

No word.

Only the unbearable weight

of almost.

She builds her pride like armor

polished, cold, unbreakable

because if she let it crack,

the fire would spill out

and swallow everything whole.

So she hopes

not for love, no

she is not that innocent.

She hopes he aches.

That somewhere,

in the quiet collapse of his nights,

he feels her absence

like a missing limb,

like a wound that will not close.

Let him wander, she thinks,

let him try to forget

but never succeed.

Because if she must carry this flame alone,

if she must be the ruin

of her own becoming

then he will not be free of it either.

Cruel?

Maybe.

But this was never love.

Love does not cage itself

behind silent glances

and sharpened pride.

This

this is hunger dressed as devotion,

a storm taught to kneel,

a fire

that learned

how to burn

without light.

[thedreamerinthewoods]

There is a sea

I carry in my chest.

Its waves do not speak,

but I hear them

in the quiet hours

between the city lights

and the endless gray streets.

Sometimes I close my eyes

and feel the salt on my lips,

the wind that never reaches me here.

I walk among people,

smile, speak, exist,

but a part of me drifts

on that hidden tide,

in a place I cannot touch,

yet cannot forget.

[thedreamerinthewoods]

The past whispers in fragments: a scent, a word, a corner of a city.

It’s fleeting, almost unreal, but it leaves a wound that never heals.

I don’t know if I mourn what was, or what never was, or if the mourning itself is the only real thing.

[thedreamerinthewoods]

There are moments when a memory visits that I never lived.

A street I never walked, a sky I never saw, a feeling I can’t place.

And my chest aches, because I know something is missing, though I don’t know what, and maybe it never existed.

[letsbelonelytogetherr]

— Melissa Cox

[calleido]

county clare, ireland

[thedreamerinthewoods]

"nostalgia"

there are places that never fade,

no matter how many seasons pass.

they linger quietly,

like photographs forgotten

in the drawer of the soul.

where i once laughed without a thought,

and learned through the ache of loss.

the air was scented with dreams,

and the people had voices

that now echo only inside my memory.

maybe it wasn’t perfect,

but it was mine.

and when i think of it,

something inside me returns

a shadow, a feeling,

as if i walk those same streets again,

only softer this time.

nostalgia…

it isn’t the wish to go back,

it’s the ache of remembering

something that will never be the same,

no matter how you reach for it.

maybe if i went back,

i wouldn’t recognize it anymore.

maybe it was beautiful

because it stayed there

still, untouched,

while i kept moving on.

and yet, there are nights

when my soul drifts back on its own,

like a child who knows the way by heart.

and there,

in the golden light of memory,

i feel whole again.

“The cruelest thing about memory is how softly it lies, making the past look gentler than it was.”

[thedreamerinthewoods]

A poem for all that stirs within me, a poem for my own soul, thoughts born from the depths, not easily shared. A poem for the nostalgia of a place that made me feel everything, a place where joy and pain intertwined. Having lived in my homeland, in that cherished place, and now far abroad, this one place still holds a promise, a fragment of something left unfinished, lingering quietly in my heart.

"Between Two Worlds"

It’s not the land that gave me birth I long for,

nor the streets I walked as a child.

I long for the homeland I truly felt,

the different one, radiant and wounded,

where every river whispered secrets,

every mountain embraced my dreams,

and the sun fell like golden light into my eyes.

The scent of chimney smoke mingles with the dawn,

spring flowers burst through the earth in colors dancing before me,

cool summer nights alive with cicadas

whispered the promise that I could truly live here,

and winter let snow fall gently on the mountains,

like crystals holding every moment I had hoped to make my own.

Yet darkness exists.

Shadows dart between the trees,

secret glances watch from afar,

whispers slide through the narrow streets,

panic courses through my veins,

a fall I cannot escape.

My heart struggles between magic and shadow,

learning to live with both wound and beauty.

Nostalgia is a mirror that never shatters,

breathing between tears and laughter,

and my soul knows:

it is not the land that bore me,

but the homeland I felt as mine,

different, wounded, radiant,

that will follow me forever,

like a bird without a cage,

with a sky meant only for her.

The “whys” swirl like flames between two worlds;

past and present become one, a wound and a promise,

and I learn to love

joy and pain, light and shadow,

decay and the immortality of memory.

I hear the wind moving the trees like living beings,

see the colors awaken in the flowers,

smell smoke, wet earth, and dew,

feel the snow melting on my hands,

and though the shadows of the departed world still pull,

I stand between memory and reality,

holding paradise and sorrow together,

living in two worlds at once

breathing, seeing, hearing, feeling every moment.

My different homeland breathes within me,

alive and eternal,

with a sky meant only for her.

Every breath, every whisper, every silence

is a piece of her that pulls me, wounds me, fills me.

And I walk through her again and again,

like a bird that belongs to no cage,

loving the wound and the paradise,

the loss and the magic,

the light and the darkness

as if she lives within me,

and I within her.

"Some places leave a wound, some leave a paradise, and some leave both, shaping who we are."

[thedreamerinthewoods]

She lives a step out of time,

in a world that moves too fast

for the way she notices

the tremble of leaves before the storm,

the way the sky sighs

just before it rains.

No one sees her the way she sees the world.

They don’t notice the ghost-light in her eyes,

or the stories stitched into her silence.

She’s searched for love

the way it exists in old books,

where hands shake before they touch,

and hearts speak louder than mouths.

Maybe he doesn’t exist here.

Maybe he’s lost in another lifetime.

But still, she waits,

like the moon waits for the tide,

knowing he will find her,

or she will drown in the wanting..

[thedreamerinthewoods]

In the forest, the stars whispered your name.

Your breath was cold, but your hands melted my winter.

I don’t know if you were a dream or a curse,

only that I still smell your scent when it rains.

[thedreamerinthewoods]

"Highways & Goodbyes"

We met under a flickering motel sign,

the kind that hums like it knows your secrets.

Your leather jacket smelled of gasoline and winter,

and I swear the stars leaned closer

just to hear what you whispered to me.

We were two ghosts in a Chevy,

chasing radio static down Route 66,

talking about forever like we could afford it

but time was a currency

we were already broke on.

You looked at me like the last cigarette in the pack,

something dangerous,

something you save for the end.

And I loved you in that slow-burn way,

like sunlight dripping through blinds

in a room we’d never wake up in.

But the right person at the wrong time

is still a kind of curse.

The universe kept pulling us apart

like old film unraveling in a projector,

and every frame was another goodbye.

Now I keep you in my rearview mirror,

a song half-played,

a highway I’ll never take again.

But darling, if the world stopped turning tonight,

I’d drive straight back to that motel,

light that last cigarette,

and let you ruin me all over again.

"Some loves are highways you only drive once, but remember forever."

[thedreamerinthewoods]

“Don’t Pity Me, My Light” (Him)

I fell,

not because I hated the light,

but because I saw it in your eyes.

An angel, cursed to remember

every life we never lived.

With wings black as promises

whispered on the edge of the world,

I held you the way you hold something

you fear you might deserve.

You were not a gift,

you were fate.

Your soul beat like the first breath

in someone who was never meant to breathe.

You, the mortal.

Me, the one who gave up Heaven

for a moment with you.

I dreamed you before you existed.

I remembered you before I touched you.

And now that I have you,

I fear every dawn that could take you back.

If the gods come to claim you,

I will become storm,

shadow,

and death.

Because I was never here to be saved.

I was here to stay.

With you.

“I Didn’t Come to Be Saved” (Her)

You didn’t come to be saved,

and I wasn’t born to run.

I knew who you were before I saw you,

because my heart remembered a pain

I hadn’t lived yet.

Your wings didn’t scare me,

they were the first thing to wrap around me

without extinguishing the flame.

They told me the fallen

don’t love, they ruin.

But you loved me so quietly,

I almost thought it didn’t hurt.

I’m not afraid to fall.

I’m only afraid of a world

where I can’t find you.

If you become shadow,

I will walk in darkness.

If you become flame,

I will burn.

Because I am no saint,

no angel.

I am the mortal who never feared

the Angel who wept for me.

"The greatest rebellions are not fought with swords, but with the choice to love what the world says you shouldn't."

[thedreamerinthewoods]

🕰️ The Time Between the Clocks

There’s a room the hours never reach

where ticking stops, and shadows stretch.

The walls are made of whispered thoughts,

and windows show what never was.

A mirror leans, but won’t reflect

just stares like something half-awake.

It knows your face, but not your age.

It saw you once, in every phase.

You walk through time like slipping thread,

through versions of yourself you shed.

A child’s laugh echoes down the hall.

A love you lost still haunts the wall.

The clocks are quiet, but they know.

They hum beneath your steady breath.

Each second folds into your bones,

and counts the lives you haven’t led.

And if you linger long enough,

you’ll see the moment that you missed.

It waits there, dressed in silver dusk.

It reaches out. You don’t resist.

"Moments don’t always vanish, they wait quietly for you in another frame of time..."

[thedreamerinthewoods]

Evelyn and the Vampire

In autumn’s hush, beneath the moon’s soft glow,

Evelyn wandered where the cold winds blow.

A city wrapped in silver mist and night,

Where shadows whispered secrets out of sight.

Along the path where ancient lanterns gleamed,

She met a figure from a timeless dream.

His eyes were deep as midnight’s endless sea,

A silent song, a dark eternity.

He spoke no words, yet stories filled the air,

Of endless nights and love beyond compare.

A vampire’s heart, both curse and fragile flame,

A soul that danced forever in the same.

Evelyn’s breath caught in the chilling breeze,

Drawn closer still by mysteries like these.

In his embrace, the world would softly fade,

Two spirits bound beneath the moon’s parade.

No dawn to chase, no mortal fear to bind,

But endless time and shadows intertwined.

And in that moment, poised between two lives,

Evelyn chose where fate and passion dive.