[prettylittledrafts]

Enclosure

If you will not give me closure,

I will gather it myself

from the space you left unspeaking,

from the silence on the shelf.

I will let it mean what it means:

not cruelty, maybe, but absence,

a heart without a map back.

I will keep what was tender.

It will live in me, low and lit,

in songs that make me soft,

in coffee ordered the way you loved it,

in shows I cannot watch

without feeling the room shift.

I will find you sometimes

in the blur of traveling,

in airport glass, in passing cities,

in the ache of almost writing.

I will stop waiting at the window.

I will stop making a shrine

of the door.

But part of me

will always leave a light on,

not to beg you back,

only to say:

if you ever come sorry,

come ready,

come real,

I’m here,

already knowing

how to meet you twice.

And if you stay gone,

I will still grow gentle

around the wound,

still wish you mercy,

morning,

and all the love

that knows how to stay.

I will make everything we had

an enclosure,

a small, safe place

where what I loved

can rest.

[traveledlight]

Where Earth Failed in Gentleness

I saw you in my dream,

in a place among the stars.

A place so beautiful it could only be matched by the way you looked at me.

I felt weak, your lips paralyzing me into surrender.

I knew I was yours.

You took control of me with your hands, laying me down, tracing my body like a map of places you wanted to visit.

There was a gentleness in your touch, soft and tender.

You wanted to take your time, to have me the way your heart desired.

In your accented voice, you told me to give in,

and so I surrendered.

I expected intensity,

but you were loving.

Kissing my body, holding my hands as you worked your way down.

I didn't expect such slow passion, but you made me burn.

The way you made love to me wasn't just sex.

It felt like something that had existed long before us,

something that made you feel seen, something that made you feel safe.

And I could feel it in the way you gave your heart to me in that moment.

It wasn't just an act.

It was peace.

It was a sharing of who we are as our energies became one.

A unity that begged to be repeated in this new world,

because Earth had failed in gentleness,

but we could begin something new in a place like this.

[traveledlight]

Flower of Your Day

I've become your every good morning,

the sun that warms the start of your day.

You carry me in your pocket,

and your hand finds its way to me

whenever you have something to say.

We share memories,

pieces of old lives,

and with every story,

I feel something grow inside me.

So what keeps me on your mind?

Am I really the flower of your day?

[traveledlight]

Residue

I've been told I'm stuck, but I'm not—not in the same way anymore.

The body keeps score, though,

in the way the brain carved pathways through all of it

until longing became something almost addictive.

It's less obsession now,

more residue.

The way certain songs still arrive like waves.

The way early mornings pull at what remains.

How loneliness can suddenly make old feelings feel alive again.

Even the aesthetics of my days carry traces of it.

Certain phrases still spark something small inside me.

And being deeply understood—

ironically, in the way I once believed I couldn't be—

still lingers somewhere beneath everything else.

A person can be gone,

yet the body can unconsciously hold onto what the possibility of them felt like:

the intensity,

the imagined futures,

the version of yourself that existed beside them,

and the feeling of finally having something deeply reciprocated.

It's strange to carry something that no longer exists.

Stranger still

the way the body remembers

what the mind is trying to release.

[traveledlight]

Moments Over Time

I sometimes don’t see it, but I am reminded of my strength and resilience, that I didn’t let it change me into someone I’m not. The way I show up for the people in my life. I guess I love in the way I want to be seen and cared for.

I see better days ahead, in the way I will heal these hidden scars, in my health, and in finding myself along the way. A new path forward, giving sunshine to everyone I meet, and I hope I will grow from the cold of this extended winter I’ve lived through.

Meaning will exist again, not in one grand moment, but in small moments over time, in the way I change, connect, and allow myself to be brave.

The thought alone brings me peace as I fight through everything that’s been hard, knowing it wasn’t all for nothing, that I learned from the past, found strength for the future, and slowly changed the definition of who I will become.

[traveledlight]

The Cost of Consciousness

I am tired in ways I can no longer think through.

This year hasn’t been soft—

it keeps moving without reason,

and I can’t seem to find my place

in all the spaces I cannot fill.

I drift through a world

where I cannot replace the meaning

I once lived inside of,

a path unforeseen

but somehow accepted anyway.

The exhaustion has soaked into my being,

like something that once made me feel alive

has been extracted from my cells,

and now I am slowly being put to death—

my eyes struggling to stay open,

wondering if I’ll fall asleep behind the wheel

and wake only to darkness.

Conversation has become something

I have to fight through,

a desperate attempt

to stay connected to something beyond myself.

My ears ring.

The fog in my brain twists words into static

while I struggle to pull meaning from them.

Still, I persist

in the way I try to care.

I feel disoriented by my own cravings,

my need for sleep pushing me toward an edge

I can no longer clearly see.

I would sooner surrender myself

to the sweetness of IV sedation

than drag my body through another empty day,

watching the dark angel in my dreams

try to coax me

into never waking again.

[traveledlight]

Night-Blooming Jasmine

You are invasive,

like night-blooming jasmine.

You’ve wrapped yourself around my thoughts,

fast-growing in your tenderness,

and I feel myself letting you.

I wait for you to open,

knowing there’s something sweet inside.

Queen of the night, they say.

I would let you rule me endlessly,

intoxicated by your floral fragrance,

imagining the taste must be just as sweet.

I want to protect you

and watch you grow

the way I wish I had long ago—

to be the sunshine

you always say that I am.

I’m your warmth in the day,

and you’re my seduction in the night—

a cycle

I never want to end.

[traveledlight]

Sometimes you find more love in the loss,

than you ever did in having it.

[traveledlight]

The Little Things

It’s the interactions.

The smile.

The way their voice changes with you.

The little phrases that would sound strange to anyone else,

but somehow feel natural between the two of you.

The unique way they touch you.

Their laugh.

The inside jokes.

The way they kiss you,

and the way it tastes.

The way they smell when they hug you.

The way they react to surprises,

or the quiet shift in them when they’re sad.

The intimate moments.

It’s all the little things

that seem so small while they’re happening,

but become the biggest things to lose

once they’re gone.

[traveledlight]

Hesitation Into Touch

I feel like I’d steal the innocence from your eyes.

I know you imagine me

in the dark spaces of your room,

my thumb brushing slowly across your lips.

But what if those hands

caressed your face instead—

my fingers slipping gently through your hair,

brushing softly against your ear?

Maybe tracing slowly down your neck,

your chest flushed beneath my touch,

close enough to leave your breathing uneven.

How far would they need to wander

before you let go of your idea of decency?

Before hesitation softened into touch?

Would the warmth of my chest pull you closer

as my hands pinned yours against the bed,

our noses barely touching—

just enough to make you linger there with me?

The sound of my voice in your ear

asking what you want.

Would it make you lean into me?

Would you lose your voice

trying to tell me?

[traveledlight]

The Reason You Said Hello

You sent me a picture of the darkness in your room.

But I wonder if you think of me there—

a subtle thought

of the light I could bring into it.

My voice filling the black spaces with color,

something you could grow used to.

My fingers hushing your lips,

tracing them ever so lightly

just to feel the softness.

You want to see me,

but for now I’m only a shadow

bringing you warmth in the cold night,

making your chest ache gently.

To think of the reasons

behind the reason you said hello

running through your mind,

leading all the way to this dark room.

A chance encounter

that changed your life.

And tonight,

you wonder what this encounter

will become.

[traveledlight]

Rewrite the Sky

I still find myself lost in everything cosmic,

like every star was meant for wishing,

like the moon was something once shared,

like there was a life before this one.

There’s still a thread of fate

wrapped around our fingers,

pulling even as I drift

through endless space.

For all the distance between us,

there was still a flame—

and even if it turned to ember,

one spark could rewrite the sky

and set it all on fire again.

[traveledlight]

[traveledlight]

Winter in My Bones

I'm scared to fall asleep at night,

knowing it'll be the same again tomorrow.

It's May now,

but I still carry winter in my bones.

The calendar was a lie.

I kept hoping time would change something,

but it only deepened.

And I can't stop picking at the wound—

long past festering,

long past diseased.

I lost myself in this pattern:

living in it,

numbing it out,

searching for tiny validations

that never feel quite the same

as what I felt before.

To feel so wanted by others,

and sometimes not even by myself.

I know I need to break the cycle,

but I'll probably live in it

a little longer...

just in case

something changes,

just in case

it becomes something different this time.

[traveledlight]

I wonder if I cross peoples minds the way they stay in mine?

[traveledlight]

He dreams of her,

a person he never really knew.

Haunting the corners of his mind

stringing him along.

It's a repetition of anguish

never knowing what it means.

So similar to real life,

spurring his curiosity.

He falls for her,

like a sailor to a Siren at sea.

He drowns every time he gets a taste.

But who is this ghost

Who always arrives with a different face?

Is she a symbol of something more?

Or is she a devil playing devious games?

[traveledlight]

I'm tired of waking up at 4 a.m. wasting in the thoughts that constantly haunt me.

Often I imagine the beauty of falling off a bridge

and the blissful moment of freedom as the world slows down.

I begin to fly before I realize my wings are clipped

and I gracefully kiss the water.

Those icy arms slowly cradle me to sleep

as I finally feel alive for the first time.

When they bury me they will finally fill the hole

that had grown so large within me.

I'll finally find my peace.

With my hands on the keys I rise from the dead like Christ on the third day.

My fingers breathe the Word of Life into these words as they reach your ears today.

My pain spills out like blood on the cross that screams to your relatable hearts.

It's the poetry that flows from my breast to yours that truly speaks to me.

This is my light in the darkness.