Not pacing.
Not counting the hours.
Just staying awake
in that quiet way
where hope doesn’t make noise.
Waiting like you wait for a light to turn on
in a room you know by heart.
Waiting because some part of me believed
you’d come back to this moment,
to this breath,
to me saying it out loud.
I’ve been waiting all night—
not because I had nothing else,
but because this mattered.
The devil wears a suit and tie—
pressed clean,
smiling easy,
knows exactly how to sound reasonable.
He doesn’t knock things over.
He rearranges them.
Calls temptation opportunity,
calls control love,
calls silence peace
while he’s draining the room of air.
He shakes hands,
looks you in the eye,
tells you everything you want to hear
right before he takes
everything you didn’t know
you were giving away.
The devil doesn’t scream.
He persuades.
He waits until you’re tired,
until you’re lonely enough
to mistake charm for safety
and confidence for truth.
He wears a suit and tie
because evil learned
it doesn’t need horns
when it has credibility.
It doesn’t need fire
when it has patience.
And by the time you notice the cost,
you’re already wondering
how you ever thought
he was on your side.
The common things—
oh, how misunderstood.
Quiet kindness mistaken for smallness,
routine for emptiness,
stability for lack of fire.
We overlook the ordinary
until it’s gone—
the steady hand,
the familiar voice,
the moments that didn’t ask to be noticed
but held everything together anyway.
It’s always the simple things
that carry the most weight,
and somehow
the least applause.
When the magnolias bloom,
the world remembers how to soften.
White petals open like quiet forgiveness,
thick with scent and patience,
unhurried by whatever we rushed through.
They bloom after the cold
as if it never owned them,
as if survival didn’t leave marks.
No announcement.
No apology.
Just beauty insisting on itself.
I think about timing then—
how some things wait until they’re ready,
how some hearts don’t open
until the frost finally loosens its grip.
How blooming late
doesn’t mean blooming wrong.
When the magnolias bloom,
I let myself believe in return.
In second chances that don’t explain themselves.
In tenderness strong enough
to come back every year
without asking who stayed to see it.
And for a moment,
everything feels possible again—
not because life is easy,
but because something beautiful
chose to open anyway.
I don’t destroy myself loudly.
There are no explosions,
no dramatic exits.
Just a slow erosion—
choice by choice,
silence by silence.
I wear it like a habit.
Like something familiar
I reach for when I don’t know
what else to do with my hands.
Old patterns feel safer
than unfamiliar hope.
I sabotage gently.
Miss the calls that might save me.
Stay where I know I’ll be hurt
because at least it’s predictable.
Pain I recognize
feels easier than healing
I don’t trust.
I tell myself I’m in control.
That I could stop anytime.
That this isn’t destruction,
it’s coping.
But the mirror keeps count
of what I’m losing
even when I refuse to.
Some days it looks like recklessness.
Other days it looks like discipline—
like denying myself rest,
joy, softness,
as if I haven’t earned them yet.
That’s the trick of it.
Self-destruction doesn’t always beg.
Sometimes it convinces you
you deserve the damage.
I don’t hate myself—
that’s the lie people expect.
I just don’t know
how to be gentle
without feeling exposed.
So I choose what hurts
before something else can.
And still, somewhere under the ruin,
there’s a part of me
that notices the harm,
that flinches,
that wants out.
That part is quiet.
But it’s not gone.
When resentment rides high
but emotions won’t grow,
I feel everything
and nothing
in the same breath.
Anger sharpens its teeth,
paces my ribs,
while feeling stays stunted—
rootbound,
afraid of the light.
I want to care louder.
I want to rage cleaner.
Instead I exist in this in-between
where hurt ferments
but never transforms.
It’s exhausting—
carrying so much weight
with nowhere for it to bloom.
Just bitterness circling itself,
calling that motion
progress.
You only smile like that
when you’re drinkin—
that loose, half-forgotten grin
that shows up
after the edges blur.
It’s not happiness.
It’s relief pretending to be joy.
A borrowed light
that flickers just long enough
to make everyone believe you’re okay.
Your eyes give it away.
They don’t soften—
they drift.
Like you’ve stepped a few inches outside yourself
and left the rest behind to cope.
I’ve seen that smile disappear
as fast as it arrives,
leave you emptier than before,
like laughter echoing in a room
no one stays in.
You wear it well, though.
Convincing.
Almost beautiful.
The kind of smile that makes people think
the problem is solved.
But I know better.
That smile only shows up
when the ache is muted,
when the truth is diluted,
when feeling less
feels safer
than feeling everything.
And when the glass is empty,
so is the room.
I want to change everything—
not out of hate for who I was,
but out of love for who
I’m finally brave enough
to become.
I’m tired of surviving days
that were meant to be lived.
Tired of shrinking myself
to fit places that never felt like home.
So I’ll start small—
a thought, a boundary, a choice.
And one by one,
the life I’ve been carrying
will learn how to let me go.
I don’t need to burn it all down.
I just need to stop building
on what was breaking me.
I used to look for myself
in other people’s hands,
measure my worth
by how tightly they held on.
But I am learning—
slowly, unevenly—
how to stay
when the room gets quiet,
how to sit with my own heart
without asking it to be smaller.
I speak to myself now
the way I once begged others to.
Gently.
With patience.
With the understanding
that healing isn’t linear
and neither am I.
I forgive the versions of me
that didn’t know better,
that chose survival over softness,
that loved fiercely
without knowing how to be safe.
I am not perfect,
but I am present.
And today,
that is enough.
I am learning to be someone
I don’t have to run from—
someone I can come home to
and rest.
Sweetest of the sunflowers,
how you’re the sun to me,
the way your presence turns my face
toward light
even on days I’ve forgotten
what warmth feels like.
I don’t chase brightness anymore.
I’ve learned how blinding it can be.
But you,
you don’t burn.
You glow steady,
soft enough to trust,
strong enough to keep me standing.
I find myself leaning your way
without thinking,
like instinct knows something
my fear hasn’t caught up to yet.
Even when I’m tired,
even when I’m closed off,
some part of me still turns toward you,
hoping for a little more day.
You see the parts of me
that have been bent by weather,
the places where storms lingered too long,
and you don’t ask me to be anything else.
You just stay.
And somehow that’s enough
to help me straighten again.
I’ve spent so long growing in survival mode,
roots tangled in doubt,
petals guarded against disappointment.
But around you,
I don’t feel rushed to bloom.
I feel allowed to open slowly,
at my own pace,
under a light that doesn’t demand
more than I can give.
If the world ever dims,
if clouds gather the way they do,
I know where I’ll turn.
Not because I need saving,
but because being near you
reminds me that growth
can still be gentle.
Sweetest of the sunflowers,
you don’t know how often
you pull me back toward hope.
How just being you
makes me believe
that even after long nights,
there is still a reason
to face the day.
Through the Fog 