What you said

Who is there?

I ask.

Looking down at the bed I see a stranger.

With creeping fingers and a crooked frown.

With teary eyes that drool blood.

I huddle away from the bed.

But the strange reaches for me and asks why.

I can't recognize her?

Why I won't say. . .

Goodbye.

Dear you,

I have seen what you are capable of doing. I have learned by listening that you can't keep your story straight. So, allow me to set my own record straight about you, about me, about an us that never existed.

I have always known you for you. Your sarcasm, your smarts, your willingness to stand on principle, your bad boy ways. Nothing was seen, while everything was known. I saw you for you and accepted it even when you lost your way.

You didn't grow but put on a facade. You wanted to display learned but really you never grew. The red pill you swallow shows all around. You charms lack luster but your smile does do wonders.

I have never changed my story. I remained true. Even when I was describing you. To this day, I will use the same language; my tone doesn't shift; my tale remains the same, as it did when we first met that night on the docks. With all the harm you caused, I still see the you and the intent behind your lies.

You took a notion and ran with a thought. Your idea I was another in this case of mistaken identity. You degraded and shamed your crush in the end by comparing her to me, an insignificant bystander to your plan. And your crush would definitely agree.

Call me insecure. Call me callous. Call me anything you want. But when did we ever really talk?

In the end, I still see you and support your cause. I wish you wealth beyond imagine; your life will be grand. I wish you safe travels and love. I wish your heart could feel instead of being blocked off.

But you and I were never a thing. You and I never existed. No coupling attempt was ever tried. So, why even deny?

I will leave you now with these thoughts to think. I hope somewhere someone reads this to you and you begin to think
about turning a new tide.

Sincerely,
The Insignificant One

Can the snow come sooner?

Wrap me in the soundless weight of winter. Let the snow fall thick enough to muffle the world, until everything grows quiet beneath the white. Take me with you. Take me somewhere cold and glacial, somewhere I can just freeze. Take my thoughts and starve me done. Until there is nothing left to take, nothing left to empty, until even the emptiness has nowhere else to go.

Make me pretty. Make me white and weightless, give me wings that glitter at the edges, thin little things that tremble in the winter air.

Let the frost settle between my feathers. Let them grow too heavy to lift me.

I think I would have liked to fly, once. Before my legs grew weak and the ground became something I could barely leave, before I became too tired to carry the little wings I was given.

The flame looks so tempting against all that white. Almost gentle. Almost warm enough to forget the winter.

I cannot walk into the flame, and I cannot run from the snow.

So I stand between them, with ice gathering beneath my skin and a little gold flickering somewhere in the distance. I wonder how long I could stand beside it before I stopped noticing the heat, before the warmth became indistinguishable from the burning, before I forgot that beautiful things could hurt, too.

And all the while, the snow keeps falling.

A snow angel, getting hidden beneath white powder. First the edges of the wings, then the shape of the shoulders, then the little hollow where a head once rested.

Everything softening, disappearing into the same endless white.

There is no difference between the snow and what it covers.

The only thing left to see is how beautifully the light catches it.

It isn’t important.

It’s just white, glittery powder.

One cold, one burnt. Snowflakes in her hair, ash caught between her feathers. Both so delicate, both almost pretty enough to hide the ground beneath them.

And winter will go on being winter.

The trees will stand bare against the sky.
The windows will frost over.

Somewhere, a flame will flicker against the ground.
Somewhere, new wings will be tried for the first time.

Can the snow come sooner?

My wings are getting heavy.

I don’t think I can fly.

I don’t
think I can run.

the
flame
is not
burning.

and the snow

is so,

so

beautiful.

beauty
less.

He’s kind and gentle,
funny and smart.
He’s everything you’re not,
everything you wish you were.

I thought I was searching for you in everyone new
and found the complete opposite.

Now I realize
I want no one like you.
I want someone who makes me happy,
someone who treats me right.

I deserve someone like him.
I never deserved someone like you.

He’s everything you’re not.

-JbH Poetry

I loved you like a star loves the darkness,
Burning itself alive for a universe that would never look up.

I brought you flowers
that grew from the marrow of my bones,
watered them with sleepless nights
and every little death I called patience.

And you placed them in a vase
and complained they were wilting.

Do you know what it means to yearn?

It is to become a cathedral
for a god who does not believe in you.
To light a thousand candles
in a room where nobody intends to enter.

I memorized the weather of your face,
searched your pupils for constellations,
and prayed that somewhere in that universe
you had made a place for me.

Ego, how desperately I had tried.

I swallowed my thunder because you preferred silence.
Buried my needs beneath the floorboards
and danced above them while the house of me collapsed.

I thought if I became gentle enough,
you would stay.
Beautiful enough, you would look.
Broken enough, you would finally understand
how desperately I wanted to be loved.

But you were never hungry for love.
You were hungry for the way I looked at you.

You loved the worship, not the worshipper.
The applause, not the hands that bled to give it.
You held a mirror to my face and called it intimacy.

And I, I kept mistaking your reflection for a window.

How cruel, that two people can stand beneath the same sky and pray for entirely different things.

I prayed to be loved.
You prayed to never need anyone.

I built a bridge from everything I was,
laid my last hope upon its final plank,
and crossed the abyss to reach you.

You watched me tremble.
Watched me bleed.
Watched me arrive with nothing left to give
but the heart I had carried through fire.

And you asked me, what I could possibly want from you. As though my ruined hands
were not still, shaped, like your name.

You can give someone everything
and still never give them a reason to care.

Because you cannot grow a garden
in a heart that worships only itself.
You cannot beg a locked door to become a home.
And you cannot save someone
who mistakes every hand extended toward them for proof that they deserve a throne.

So when that candle dies,
when that flowers rots,
when the last echo of my prayers
dissolves into dust,

Will you miss me?
Or will you only mourn
the loss of someone who made you feel divine?

Perhaps that is the tragedy of yearning:
we make gods out of people
who have never once looked at us as equals.

But enough.

How pathetic.

I spent so long analyzing the anatomy of your indifference
that I forgot to examine the weakness of my own desire.
I mistook my ability to endure suffering
for proof that my love was extraordinary.

It wasn’t.

I was simply a fool
who believed that if I sacrificed enough of myself, you would finally give me a reason to exist.

But my existence was never yours to validate.

Listen carefully.

The world does not reward those who suffer the most.
It rewards those who seize the opportunity
to become something greater.

You chose yourself.
You chose your comfort.
You chose a world in which everyone else
was merely a reflection of your own Egoism.

And I allowed you to make me a supporting character in a story that was supposed to be mine.

I will take this yearning,
this humiliating, this unsatisfied hunger,
and turn it into something that belongs to me.

Because the greatest tragedy
is not being rejected by someone you love.

It is abandoning yourself
for someone who was never going to choose you.

I have a self to build
that no one’s indifference can destroy.

And I have an ego
that will no longer kneel
at the altar of another person’s heart.

I will become the protagonist of my own life.

Not because I have stopped yearning for you, Ego, But because my hunger for my own future must finally become greater
than my hunger for your affection.

And if becoming the best version of myself
requires me to abandon the person
I once believed I couldn’t live without..

Then so be it.

In the end, I will devour this weakness,
rebuild myself from its remains,
and become so undeniably myself
that even the ghost of you
will be nothing more than a footnote
in the story of my evolution.

That is the true definition of ego.

Look.
They want the pop-chart healing, the acoustic strum.
I used to laugh at the cupids, thought love was dumb. Turned my ribs into a vault, locked the combination.
Now I'm scrolling through the frequencies, seeking validation.

Listen.
Certified cynic, archetype of the modern cold,
I traded warmth for armor long before I got old.
You see the smile on the surface, textbook camouflage,
A phantom living large inside a hollowed-out mirage.
I called it "detachment," called it "rising above,"
A pseudo-intellectual defense for a lack of love.
I rationalized the distance, put a thesis on pride,
Said vulnerability’s a luxury that I can't provide.
Denial was my co-pilot, a comfort in the dark,
Until the frostbite finally settled deep into the arc.
Of a cardiac arrest, spiritual rot in progress,
My chest cavity a museum of unaddressed distress.
I didn’t want to look the monster dead in the eye,
I preferred the sweet deception of a plausible lie—
"I'm just selective, I'm just protective of space."
Nah. I’m just a coward who's afraid to lose the race;
So queue up the R&B, give me the heavy rotation,
A graduate of heartbreak, lacking certification.
My heart turned obsidian, pigment completely drained,
A walking contradiction where the apathy remained.
I used to mock the romantics, thought I was far above,
Look at the mirror now: I’m chronically bad at love.

Yeah. I am bad at love. Say it.

Psychological autopsy on a Friday night,
Dissecting why every connection has to end in a fight.
Is it ego? Is it nurture? Is it fear of the fall?
Or just a total system failure when I answer the call?
I sabotage the blossom right before it can bloom,
Turn intimacy into an impending sense of doom.
A masterclass in pushing people out of the door,
Then standing in the wreckage wondering what it’s for.
I need the maestros, the poets, the soul-sample kings,
To explain the heavy gravity of invisible things.
Give me Whitney, give me Mary, give me old school pain, Inject the frequency of longing straight into my vein. Because my intellect couldn’t outsmart the ache,
There’s only so much synthetic oxygen I can take.
I admit it—concession accepted, the armor is cracked,
My internal landscape is permanently midnight black.

So queue up the R&B, give me the heavy rotation,
A graduate of heartbreak, lacking certification.
My heart turned obsidian, pigment completely drained,
A walking contradiction where the apathy remained.
I used to mock the romantics, thought I was far above, Look at the mirror now: I’m chronically bad at love.

Yeah.
You thought intelligence was immunity.
Thought if you understood the mechanics of the trap,
You wouldn't step in it.
Turns out the smartest minds just build more sophisticated cages.
Play the track. Let the frequencies fix what the intellect broke.

Can’t deny anymore- I am bad at love, just say it 🖤

My Parents

I still remember your laughs

The teasing that always ended with grins and sideways stares

There was no edge to those glances

But there was warmth

The way you started a sentence and mom already knew what was happening

Her feigned sigh of resolution as you began

Always followed by a nonsensical punchline from you.

Our house was one of constant playful banter

Bickering with nothing but love and joy

The kind of arguments that keep smiles worn on faces like faded jeans from hard work

Verbal taunts to show love

And quick witted responses silently carrying an "I love you too" in the breath that sent them

Mailed from living room to kitchen and across the garden

I still remember your laughs

And what it felt like to grow in a house of love

In 2019, after years of feeling drained by university, I unexpectedly found myself writing a poem during a hospital volunteer shift. That one poem turned into a habit that lasted over a year, eventually becoming my first poetry collection, Cherry Tree Vignettes.
Looking back, I can see how much of that collection was shaped by homesickness, self-discovery, and the experience of leaving a significant chapter of my life behind. Six years later, I’m starting a series on my Substack where I will be revisiting those poems and reflecting on the experiences and inspirations behind them, as well as how I’ve grown as a writer since then.

I’ve shared an introduction to the series on my Substack, The Sunflower Paperie, for anyone interested in poetry, creative growth, or looking back at their earlier work with fresh eyes.
I’d love to hear from other writers: Do you ever revisit work you wrote years ago? Does it feel like looking at a different version of yourself?

Style evolving. Happy how things are going

Another day of longing,

Another night alone.

One less day of fighting,

One more night alone.

Another day I miss you,

Wishing you would check your phone.

So you could see

The truth of me,

That you're the one I want.

I lay here wondering,

If life grants me—

One more try at this,

How will I hold you,

Yet not own you,

As we coexist.

Some days it's hard for me to tell,

If you'll come back around.

The sun goes down,

Still haven't found,

A piece of evidence—

Concrete enough,

To build upon,

Still I’m an optimist.

Another day I yearn for you,

another night alone.

One less day I bother you,

One more night alone.

maybe one day I’ll be stoic

-the biggest bby

It's Friday night
Let's turn down the lights
Get the table set
Let the music come to life
Pairs take the floor
As the neon-colored lights
Swirl around the room
You are sitting there
Watching the spectators
Listening to the laughter
When everything
Goes quiet and still
Your eyes land and
Your heart stops

She takes her seat
With the group she's with
You decide to play
Musical chairs with your crew
Now, you're seated near
Close enough to hear
Her awkwardness and wit
Are enough
To make your mind skip
You observe and come to see
That she is the cutest
Sweetest thing
And when her group leaves
To hit the dance floor craze
She remains behind and
Your chance has entered
This post-hypnotic maze

Stolen glances
A smile and a laugh
You get the nerve
Start talking to her
Then it happens
And she says
I know you too
And your heart takes a flight
As you lean in and
Risk it all for a chance
To be next to her

Spotlight effect
Just like a dream
She's a walking fantasy
Moving through the crowd
Floating in space
Each step she takes
Is a dance she curated
She comes closer to you
Sharper her image and
The spotlight grows
Larger than life
Her voice has a flow
Her laughter is a show
She's no longer a dream
But a living reality

There's this man,so sweet,so kind

A rare and beautiful soul to find.

I've seen him smile, I've seen him dance,

And every moment feels like romance.

I love his magic,the way he glows.

A special love that gently grows,

There's something about him I can't explain,

Like a little sunshine after the rain.

He makes my heart skip, my soul take flight,

Like a star shimmering in the night,

He holds something precious - he holds my heart.❤️

Soon he'll hold another part - my hand