INKSPIRATION

I looked toward the horizon that kept returning,a portrait aging in another room.Something disturbed the silence—footsteps rehearsing their leaving. This section shifts the poem away from physical memory and into emotional anticipation. The house still exists,the silence still lingers,but something begins changing beneath the surface. The poem is no longer only about remembering. It becomes […]

I padded through the halls to the alcove.Pictures of our gathered memoirshung along nail-scratched, cracking walls.Dan Seals’ voice echoed through the floorboards. The poem opens quietly. There is no dramatic entrance.No immediate confrontation with grief. Only movement. Slow,careful,almost hesitant movement through a familiar space. The word “padded” softens the subject’s arrival into the poem. It

The freesias will knowwhat I tried to say. Some flowers bloom unseen.So do some poems. Where Meaning Finally Rests The poem does not reach outward for validation. It does not ask to be fully understood. After everything—the return to self,the search for belonging,the witnessing of emotion,the confrontation with pain,the hesitation to be seen,the questioning of

And near it oncea freesia grew—soft as a promisenobody knew. I carried that momentlike hidden light—a bloom that livedoutside of sight. Perhaps I’ll recall itin precipice of pools,thinking of loveand the ache it fuels. What We Choose to Keep Here, the poem becomes more intimate than ever. After learning that beauty does not need to

Once, a red rosesprouted from the ground.No one was thereto turn around. No voice to praise it.No post to send.Just quiet beauty,without pretend. When No One Is Looking Here, the poem arrives at a quiet realization. After questioning worth (Part 6),after carrying the weight of being seen (Part 5),after moving through pain, belonging, and reflection—

Tell me, my love—what is the worthof fragile linesI offer the world? The freesias leanin patient air,as if they knowwhy I am here. I search for crimson huesand their solemn glow—the quiet trutha lone heart knows. I want to stand in the grassand watch the sun rise,slow as a thoughtreturning twice. For years I stayed

This trip grows heavy.Too heavy for show,for shining roomsand names I barely know. When Expression Meets Exposure Here, the poem begins to resist. After moving through reflection, belonging, witnessing, and inner ache,it arrives at something more external— the idea of being seen. And with it,the weight that follows. In the earlier parts, writing felt intimate.A

What crawls beneath these ribsthat should not be?A quiet ache,like a rising sea. Pain comes in waves—soft, yet slow—enough to haltwhere feet would go. The Turning Inward Here, the poem shifts again. The landscape disappears. The stillness remains—but it changes form. What once existed outside—fields, stones, quiet spaces—now moves inward. Into the body.Into something felt,

A field of freesias,pale and near—the kind of placethat understands a tear.   I may leave soon,but not beforeI ask my musewhat makes my core. A Quiet Landscape This part of the poem arrives in stillness. A field of freesias is not described with movement or narrative expansion. Instead, it is placed before the reader