Category: Poetry

They loosen their grip on light,

release the long-held green,

and drift—

small decisions made by air.

What once stitched sky to branch

now learns the language of ground,

turning color into memory,

and sound into rest.

The climb tore skin from bone,

and every breath was fire.

Stone gave no mercy,

wind whispered doubt.

But still—one step,

then another.

At the summit,

no fanfare—only sky.

And the silence

finally bowed.

One opens.

Another waits.

A third was never real.

They do not lead,

only suggest.

The floor is unconvinced.

A door closes, and they wait.

Scandal is leaving, even for a moment.

Controversy is an empty hand.

Abuse is forgetting to come home.

Still, they forgive before you ask.

hands slip through nothing,

blue breath breaks—

a shape, no memory.

reflection shatters,

reforms,

never the same,

never still.

A step taken, then wished away.

Silence fills the gaps

where different words could have been.

Scandal of the self,

controversy with no audience.

Abuse of memory—

playing it back, changing nothing.

A whisper grows teeth.

Controversy ripples outward,

pulling in those who were never near.

Scandal wears a new face,

painted by hands that were never there.

Abuse is spoken of loudly,

then drowned beneath the next wave.

Nothing ends,

only shifts shape.

Pressed down, held still,

it learns the language of waiting.

Light enters and does not return,

trapped in angles too sharp to escape.

Fingers pass over it,

names are given,

none of them true.

It does not ask to be wanted,

but it is.

“Hollow, Waiting”

It holds nothing until it does.

Clear, but never empty.

Full, but never satisfied.

The outside sweats,

the inside never does.

A mouth with no voice,

only the sound of what leaves.

“Where It Stays”

It moves without moving,

folding itself into walls, into skin.

Everything remembers it,

but no one holds it.

A shimmer, a breath turned solid,

the air tasting of distance.

It leaves,

but never fully.

Brendan Ragan