OMG JAY!!! I read with this the tender anticipation of how it feels to read about your loved one dying. A gasp, then a grasp of my heart. 🩷💙🩷💙 I am SO glad to exist in this space and in these times with Artists like YOU! Ugh I died in this poem. in the best way.
Verse, Your words landed right in my chest and in my eyes. To be read like this—to have someone grasp the weight, the tenderness, the ache and the turning—that means everything.
I’m grateful we exist in this space together, where art and love and loss all breathe side by side. Thank you for holding this with me. So much love right back to you. ❤️💙
A Study in Surrender
(in Vivian’s voice from THE ART OF QUIET RESISTANCE)
...
Come closer.
No need to be afraid, my darling—
not of me, not of this.
I have lived long enough to know
when a woman is vulnerable
to the precise weight of her own longing.
And you, my dear, are trembling on the edge,
breath hitching like the last note
of a love song sung too sweetly.
.
I have seen this before.
I have written the chapter,
penned the verses in ink and skin,
pressed my name into the sighs of lovers
who swore they had never been kissed
until they were kissed by me.
.
Do you wish to try and resist?
By all means, amuse me.
But I see the way you lean in,
the way your fingers ghost over
the cuff of my sweater,
testing the fabric as if
testing your own resolve.
.
I have spent decades perfecting this art—
the slow curl of a glance,
the pause just before a touch,
the moment between invitation and inevitability.
I know how to leave a woman breathless,
how to make her feel alive,
how to pull the silk thread of desire
until restraint unravels at her feet.
.
You asked me, once, what it would be like.
A date?
How quaint.
I am not a woman of candles and pleasantries.
I am the quiet turn
in the conversation
that leaves you gasping for air.
.
You think you are safe.
You are not.
.
And yet, my love, you have never been safer.
Never more seen, more known.
Never more willing to be broken open,
to be written into something greater
than the life you’ve held at arm’s length.
.
So, if you must speak,
choose wisely.
.
Choose what you know to be true.
Choose the word that will set this into motion.
.
Please.
.
Ah.
.
That’s the one.
___________________
For the ARTSTACK
The Poetry Haul Challenge
Week Nine - #artstackpoets #artstack
This week’s words are: try, love, sweater, please, broken, vulnerable, date, alive, turn, chapter
Us—
late night again
sharing the vulnerable and broken
breathing in and out love’s anchoring chapters
Us — knowing what it means to feel alive.
---
Prompt words: love, broken, vulnerable, alive, chapter
---
NB: This poem is a vardhaku, a poetry form that I invented a few years ago. For more information, visit https://creativeramblings.com/vardhaku/.
---
@ARTSTACK
#artstackpoets #ThePoetryHaul
"Chapters"
Hello and goodbye.
My feelings can remember your smile. I felt so alive when I heard you laugh.
It's been almost a year, and I'm stuck in this chapter. Is there a way that I might be broken and fractured?
It doesn't matter how hard I try, I keep falling in the same old lie.
Saying my love for you was vain. And yet my soul turns so vulnerable when it comes to your name.
Can you remember us in that room? Will there ever be a date when I get an answer from you? Or is this another game to lose?
Maybe you are just another chapter in my life, but oh my beautiful man, you really left me with a scar.
hey love,
can i sit inside
you for a moment?
have a heart to heart
with your heart?
can i oil your scalp
with sunshine and prayers?
can i soothe the ache
of your wounds broken open?
may i water the buds that
stem from your spine?
because i’ve been trying—
tracing and weaving words
through space and time
just to find you
can i sit with you
in a lonely silence
longing for nothing
but us?
may i kneel
before you,
palms open
with love letters
and poems?
can i be the song
you sing that makes
you come alive?
can i tease out
your vulnerable side?
i just…
never mind
hey love,
please—
allow my nature
to be the moon that
pulls the tide of you
let me consume you
with compassion
wrap you up
in the sweater
of my energetic affection
and somatic expressions
of love and light
can i fight for you
when your tongue is heavy,
and your flesh, weak?
can i speak to
the quietest parts of you?
turn each page of your journey
into chapters of lessons and truth?
hey love,
does this resonate
with you?
and do you recognize
this voice?
listen, my love
this is You
speaking
to
you
-verse
(see the art i included on my latest post)
Wow, I felt every word, love how it started of like it was to an external lover and ended as the self as the lover🩶
thank you Kola!! 🩷
omg i love love this, this flowed just like a song.
thank you so much, Ashley! 🩷
The Last Stitch—for Connie
It is the fifth Memorial Day, Connie.
The day folds over itself like a well-worn page,
a chapter I have read and re-read,
its ink bleeding into me, even now.
🪡
You were the love of my life—
for twenty-two years, a story told in stolen hours,
a life together, apart.
A love not caged, yet never quite free.
🪢
I tried.
Tried to mend what was broken,
tried to stitch together the frayed edges of you, of me—
a needle slipping through time,
pulling but never quite binding.
🦛
Please—
I whisper to the silence you left behind—
let this be the turning.
Let this be the place where the ink dries,
where I do not beg the past for one more line.
👕
All I have now is your sweater,
the last stitch of you against my skin.
It holds neither warmth nor weight,
just the ghost of a touch that once made me feel alive.
🦁
And I am alive.
Not as Judith, not as the name you knew,
but as Jay—unfolded, untethered, vulnerable.
No longer trying to repair what was never mine to fix.
📚
This chapter is closing, Connie.
And for the first time, I am not just turning the page—
I am writing a new book altogether.
📖
Maybe, just maybe, love will ink itself in again.
Maybe, just maybe, this time, it will stay.
❤️
#artstackpoet #ThePoetryHaul
This week’s words are: try, love, sweater, please, broken, vulnerable, date, alive, turn, chapter
OMG JAY!!! I read with this the tender anticipation of how it feels to read about your loved one dying. A gasp, then a grasp of my heart. 🩷💙🩷💙 I am SO glad to exist in this space and in these times with Artists like YOU! Ugh I died in this poem. in the best way.
Every. single. word. (and the emoji line breaks)
“Please—
I whisper to the silence you left behind—
let this be the turning.
Let this be the place where the ink dries,
where I do not beg the past for one more line.”
SO much L💓VE.
Verse, Your words landed right in my chest and in my eyes. To be read like this—to have someone grasp the weight, the tenderness, the ache and the turning—that means everything.
I’m grateful we exist in this space together, where art and love and loss all breathe side by side. Thank you for holding this with me. So much love right back to you. ❤️💙
Try by Sarah Hauser
I’ve got to try
When so much feels broken
Got to try
When this chapter feels hopeless
Try
When the night feels endless
Try and keep
My spark alive
Remember the love
That’s in my heart
Always
People and animals
So special to me
That beautiful light
That’s always with me
Even when
My spirit’s so vulnerable
That beautiful light
Is always there
@artstack #ThePoetryHaul
https://open.substack.com/pub/lazarus9/p/she-fits-perfect-erotic-poem?r=58p6te&utm_medium=ios
March, the Eighth
Maybe sure it’s
over
lover
I’m too broken
you’re too sober
Chapter eight,
just please
remember
Turn the page
and try for better?
I’m alive inside
our
sorrow
Please remember
me tomorrow
March,
the eighth
inside a sweater
All but warm in
sweater
weather
I’ll be still, be
vulnerable
I know you think I
stand too tall
But this, the eighth
is still our date
Just
please
believe
It’s not too late
I want this broken,
sober,
chapter
Dead and gone.
𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦'𝘴 𝘢𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴
𝘢𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘳
But what a time to be alive,
When your no longer disciplined,
Looking longing and searching for the right things in all the wrong places!
Places you knew never served you any good, piled high with broken glass and red flags.
But somehow you stayed in your endless delusions of what you saw as okay.
Life has a crazy way of playing mind games.
Vulnerable, overwhelmed, over stimulated, over stressed,
and underappreciated. playing a losing game, of cat and mouse.
But yet again you still want to try love.
Living for love and trying to survive love.
Operating out of survival mode is a hell of a thing,
Hell trying to survive love is a hell of a thing
at any moment you can completely lose your mind.
Amazed and astonished at how at how you even survived love!
Looking back to find date when you thought this love was okay?
The broken love, hopeless love, the never ending feeling of finding everlasting love.
#POERTYHAUL #ARTSTACK
Loved
Today
Forest of thoughts
Thick as a wall
I have to fly
Up above
To see beyond
Smoke and fury
Many worries
About so many wrongs
I have to fly
Up above
To see beyond
Step away from the chaos
To see to the core
Look through the smokescreen
There’s so much more
Than what we see
With just our eyes
We need to see with all our senses
Beyond all disguise
Through the haze of tears
I need to be brave
Keep searching for the truth
In each new day
Open my heart
With each new dawn
And fly up above
To see beyond
#ThePoetryHaul @ARTSTACK
Try by Sarah Hauser
I’ve got to try
When so much feels broken
Got to try
When this chapter feels hopeless
Try
When the night feels endless
Try and keep
My spark alive
Remember the love
That’s in my heart
Always
People and animals
So special to me
That beautiful light
That’s always with me
Even when
My spirit’s so vulnerable
That beautiful light
Is always there
@artstack #ThePoetryHaul
Untitled
Please try to love me
Show me I’m not broken
Answer my prayers,
I cry- when’s it going to be my turn ?
Hurt before, I can not endure the thought of another ended chapter
A growing collection in my closet I can not add another sweater
You tell me I am loved and I do not need to beg-
“Don’t say please, I don’t even have to try,
Being near you makes me so alive”
Naked and Vulnerable
My heart an open wound, your love a balm
Time passes
things change
My prayer is different, I cry-
Please, see that I love me
Know that I am not broken
Pick a calendar date,
I know what I want
Seal the deal- when’s it going to be our turn ?
#ThePoetryHaul
Thank you!! 🥹