quietcameafter

a quiet place for thoughts that survived the noise. here, calm doesn’t mean nothing happened. it means I made it through. https://www.instagram.com/thequietcameafter

[thequietcameafter]

Wounds lay

where life

was.

[thequietcameafter]

Dis-aster

I search the sky.

I beg to find your light

lost among a thousand stars

just as bright.

You turn away and I fight for you in vain.

My tired eyes grow used to only pain,

till hollow, hopeless, shutting into void.

Then quiet.

Through the black a soft light flash.

So long I searched for you into the outer space,

while all along, my star, you still shone

and survived my ache.

That light you carry, buried in your chest,

it will not fail. It’s keeping you safe.

[thequietcameafter]

what is your name?

I am enjoying your blog.

You can call me J. Nice meeting you, and thank you for following me. Hope you’ll be enjoying my blog for a long time.

Sincerely,

[thequietcameafter]

Fragmented

You are not one person

but a house with many rooms

and I kept opening doors

hoping to find the real you.

The broken one,

the one who was brave enough to cry in my presence,

the one who held me like something worth keeping.

But you were all of them.

Shifting with the light.

Warm in my bed like my coffee in the morning,

a stranger by noon having lunch with someone else.

I was looking for the version of you

I could finally accept, finally forgive,

and inevitably leave.

But you don’t come in one piece.

Your kindness arrives

from the same hands

that are punching my soul.

[thequietcameafter]

Embrace

The snow was deep,

the cold wind rippling the skin of my face.

Your cheeks flushed red,

your hands buried in the pocket of your black hoodie,

canvas shoes

wrong choice for the harshest winter in fifty years.

One week before Christmas,

the sounds muffled by snow

meant nothing

against the emptiness expanding

inside my soul.

“Would you like to have dinner with me?

I’d love to cook you something.”

“Of course, should we go shopping together?”

You told me about your childhood,

and how the supermarket reminded you

that you had once been a child too.

Impossible as it seemed

to imagine you more fragile

than you already are.

We chose the rotisserie chickens,

some pasta sauce,

something sweet,

something to drink.

We drifted through the aisles

of that infinite store

almost an inch above the ground,

both of us

with hearts bleeding quietly

from loneliness.

I nearly cried

from homesickness.

It is hard to be twenty hours away from home

during the holidays.

But somehow your clumsy presence

reassured me.

You were there:

alive, sincere, breakable, attentive.

Nothing truer or stronger

could exist in the universe.

For a moment I mistook

that reality I had always denied,

always kept at arm’s length,

for home.

You made me feel

part of life

once more.

And so I was reborn, just for an instant.

Imagining alternative worlds,

lives that could have existed,

stories that could have ended

to make room

for infinite possibilities.

We entered my studio,

the first time I had ever let you

close to my life.

I cooked.

We ate, we talked, we laughed, we drank.

It was there that the illusions

went quiet.

You were so near,

the longest embrace of my life.

I could feel you breathing,

your sigh against my neck,

your hands, warm now,

resting on my hips,

your cheek pressed against mine.

You reached for my hand.

You whispered:

I love you.

[thequietcameafter]

Two Bloods

From her I learned to carry pain

like a lantern in both hands.

To feel everything, deeply, wholly,

and let that fullness be art, not wound.

From him I inherited the weight.

The floor. The short gaze to a door.

Hands that took what wasn’t given,

voices that made smallness all I deserved.

I am both rivers.

One clear, one cold.

And which one runs

depends on whose shore I’m standing on.

Never asked for either of them,

but here I stand.

Which water should I offer the next man?

Which stream I should finally let dry?

[thequietcameafter]

Goodbyes have no time.

I think of you.

I almost write.

I think of you.

I almost call.

You are here

but can’t find a sense

why my presence in your life

felt like a weight -

the ones you barely carry.

So I took up less space.

And stopped calling.

A little less.

And stopped talking.

A little less.

Forgot your own me.

But I think of you.

And I can’t leave.

I almost cry.

Goodbyes have no time.

[thequietcameafter]

All the words I said instead: a list.

∙ it’s fine, this is fine

∙ of course, I understand completely

∙ I love you too

∙ no, you didn’t hurt me

∙ I will always be there for you

∙ it’s just a scratch, these things happen

∙ but why can’t you love me?

∙ I don’t have a problem with you, I just need to find out who I am

∙ it’s not forever, I can always come back

∙ I promise I will never leave you

∙ I will stop complaining, I’m sorry

∙ I know you love me, in your own way

[thequietcameafter]

Inhabited

Don’t bring me to your house, bring me my home.

[thequietcameafter]

Before you knew it was ending

There was still coffee in the cup.

The window held the morning like it meant to.

You said something ordinary,

I don’t remember what,

and I said yes… or maybe nothing.

But the way you answered showed how strongly

you believed I’d have been there to listen. Always.

A sunbeam was doing that weird thing

it does every winter through the window curtains.

Creeping sideways, apologetic,

as if it knew it wouldn’t stay longer.

We didn’t know yet, I was already elegizing you.

[thequietcameafter]

Hiraeth

I reach for it the way you reach for a forgotten word.

Certain it exists somewhere…

written inside a dusty book,

or on the edge of a torn paper map.

There is a pull.

I hear the call.

But the thread leads back to a place

that no longer knows my name,

to a door that opens for someone else.

I am fluent in leaving.

It is the returning

I never learned.

[thequietcameafter]

To the end

Because my life hasn’t ended.

Because I felt and fiercely mended.

Because I owe myself everything: love and respect.

Because if he is not him, someone else will connect.

And if nobody will: I will still stand.

Because I love myself, and I will hold my own hand.

[thequietcameafter]

Prayers

I can imagine your arms around my heart.

I’m drowning in this lonely dark,

on my knees crying.

I’m reaching for hands that aren't here.

[thequietcameafter]

Say it again

Once you spoke my name,

the silence I was made of became a shape.

Your voice drew me into existence.

Don’t ever forget my name.

[thequietcameafter]

There's a strange grace in realising that not everyone is meant to stay, but the ones who awaken something in you leave their light behind.

White Nights reminded me that beauty doesn't demand permanence, only authenticity. That’s our gift.

“ ‘Till to-morrow. “

[thequietcameafter]

On Accepting That You Were Here

I'm afraid to accept change,

because it asks me to admit:

I cannot control this life,

cannot hold it, make it fit.

One day my body, soft and warm,

will feed the worms through flesh and bone.

They'll eat this breathing, aching form,

and I'll feel nothing, dirt and stone.

Not the cool weight on my chest,

not the dark earth in my mouth,

not the patient ground at rest.

I'll be silent, north and south.

So I must accept the void,

the hollow crawling through my skin,

the emptiness I can't avoid,

the nothingness that lives within.

It breathes beside me like a twin,

clings to me like morning dew.

The black quiet that's always been,

the vacant space I'm passing through.

Yes, I can be bright and whole,

but joy will shatter, drain, and fade

before I notice in my soul

before I see the light I made.

The world's a gorgeous, cruel parade,

smoke and mirrors, sweet illusion.

Nothing means what I have weighed,

love and loss are mere confusion.

The void begins inside my chest,

this black and yawning, quiet core.

It spreads outward, swallowing the rest,

wraps around what I adore.

No matter how I scream and roar,

how desperately I make sound,

silence waits behind the door,

silence is the frame around.

To accept you were here, your stay,

your brief visit in my life,

I must accept you've gone away,

a ghost, a memory, a knife.

Nonexistent. Less than air.

A shape I carry in my head.

You were real, but now… you're where?

Among the living or the dead?

But if I accept the rot, the end,

the worms, the dirt, forgetting scar…

am I saying life can bend?

That it can show me what we are?

That the world is full of sound?

Dreams that twist and ache and scream?

That my heart still pounds… Still pounds!

Proves I'm more than death's cold dream?

That my body -wrecked but bright-

is alive this very hour?

Feels the sting of morning light,

does it know its temporary power?

That I taste the bitter sweet,

feel the weight of wanting more,

understand my own heartbeat,

the truth of what this body's for?

If I let you be a ghost,

accept the harm, the loss, the ache,

then I'm saying what I host:

life itself. Awake! Awake!

[thequietcameafter]

On my cheeks the return of the salt

quietly collapses from my heart to my skin.

Oh grief, I am joining your cult!

I fall in, and I rise within.

To feel is the mark.

The curse of the lasts.

I depart, I pray,

yet I am not the same.

To you I whisper my vow:

you’re loved as you are.

No fixing, no “how”,

a last gaze from afar.

I accepted your pain

without betraying your reign.

I embraced your soul

that violently I still hold.

You taught me release.

The holy art of loss.

To loosen is peace,

not a broken cross.

Now I stand, claimed

by the self I retrieve.

More whole in my name

because I chose to leave.

And this is my art

obsessing you in the dark:

I can love without use,

accepting every scar and every bruise.