It is quiet,
it is oh so quiet.
You said it would be; I never
quite believed you though.

The silence is rather loud,
yet comforting.
However, I’m not sure what to do with it.

My bones, in a continuous cycle of survival,
they were never taught to exist.
Is this what it feels like?

The muse of my suffering ended,
so naturally, my peace began.
I guess I should live it now.

It is oh so quiet though,
I shall let you know if I survive.
Sorry … my bones still believe they must fight.
I shall let you know if all is well,

love rosie

I wrote this poem a year ago, as I began to reflect on what life feels like after the storm. I feel that when anyone goes through something hard to navigate, no one really discusses what happens after the aftermath. When something turbulent happens, whether that be a death, you’ve been hurt in some way, or something turns your world on its axis, what happens when it’s all over? When the storm has passed. You’re no longer being swept by the current but learning to swim with the tide. It can be a bewildering feeling to ask yourself, “How do I do this?”

In my poetry, I like to reflect a lot on silence, how it can be comforting yet debilitating. There is nothing louder than the silence between you and your own thoughts. Screaming to be acknowledged. So what happens when you do? You acknowledged it: the grief, the pain, the suffering. You’ve done the work. The therapy, medication, reached for whatever it is that made you feel alive again. What then? When you’re taught to survive, it can be hard to live.

And that is what I wanted to put into words. When a friend checks on you and, for once in your life, you have no news, no anxiety to spiral, no harshness of a recent depressive episode, no consuming grief. Just you, existing. How does one do that? What does it feel like to sit with a book again? To actually enjoy it and not be poisoned by nagging thoughts and anxiety? To enjoy films without your mind being a ticking time bomb. To return to the girl who loved to get lost in worlds paradoxed to her own, before life began to chip away at her heart of creativity.

Themes touched on here are grief, mental health, anxiety, and depression. These topics can be hard to discuss, but literature helps me understand them. To read someone else talk about the same thing I have gone through and help me feel a little bit less alone is my comfort: novels, poetry, a bloody play from 500 years ago. Any form connects to me profoundly.

I hope you enjoy my poem; I would love to hear anyone’s thoughts/ stories if you wish to share in the comments below! :)

The process of losing someone, yourself, or a place is incredibly challenging to have to experience. I am someone who has experienced a lot of grief in my life. What helped me maneuver such complexity was poetry. Writing how I felt helped me put into words what I was feeling, which, in time, allowed me to grieve.

Within My Solitude Comes Grief,
2024

Within my solitude comes grief,
So I avoided it for two winters.

Two years of scattered memories
and tortured wounds.
I buried my sadness like I buried my love for you.

Cities left,
bridges burnt.
My grief still begging me to release it from my vessel.

Grief catches you in fleeting moments.
When the noise is so quiet, you can hear the silence.

I will continue to avoid this aching dread,
out of fear of remembering the memory of you.

Facing My Solitude
2025

Facing my solitude only left me with grief.
Disguised as confusion, I believed it would be brief.

Something I could maneuver into the distance.
A weapon I could wield to hide me from my truth.
However, grief: only provides its existence.

My stained ink looking back at me.
My own words scream at me with such persistence.
I truly believed you would be brief-
death has only made you more alive.

Within my solitude comes grief,
however, maybe by next winter,
I will greet her.

I wrote these two poems at different stages of my journey with grief. The first poem was written at a time I shut grief out completely. Completely avoidant of my own suffering. The poem reflects on how, when left alone with yourself, the noise of grief only gets louder. Cities left, bridges burning, but I continue to run my feelings away. The themes of this poem demonstrate that the first few months or years, or however long it takes you, are spent avoiding grief. If I pretend it’s not happening, I will be fine! However, in doing this, you are the opposite. Every area of your life is taken under: mental state, work, education, friends, partners. Thus circling back to the beginning of this journal, how grief consumes your entire sense of self.

Within the second poem, Facing My Solitude, the realisation that I cannot keep pretending this isn’t happening is harsher than I come to realise. Like all feelings really, if you don’t feel them, they will come out eventually. The last verse concludes with ‘Maybe by next winter, I will greet her’. I wanted to reflect on the feeling of wanting to grieve, but not really knowing how. How winter will come again, and you have to be able to not drown in your grief.

Manoeuvring grief as a young person can be extremely challenging. Grief is difficult at any stage of life, of course; however, I have found: how am I expected to grieve someone else when I don’t even know who I am yet? I don’t have the pillars to handle such defeat. The almost childlike cry of fear, sadness, and loneliness in having to address you’re not as ok as you claim. For me, I lost someone very close to me, and when that happens, it is like you return to a childlike state of just wanting to be cared for. And when the harsh reality creeps in that you have to be the one to care for yourself because you’re an adult now, it is extremely lonely. But within time you find you can. You do have the pillars, the building blocks to hold you up, the crew to guide your fleet. The strength to carry yourself on, but not only survive, but also live too.

I hope this has resonated with anyone in some way, and if anyone is struggling with such hardship right now, I hope my words can offer some comfort or understanding. As annoying and cliché as it is to hear, time truly is the biggest healer. The only way out is through!

Love Rosie x

If poetry is imitation, then throughout centuries we, as humans, imitate those around us and what we see. For me, what connects to me the most is nature poetry/imagery. It’s in the rhythm of the water and the harmony of the wind, my soul becomes a light.

I was not someone who grew up reading classic literature. I grew up reading Jaqueline Wilson books and thought John Green’s Paper Towns at age fifteen was the epitome of literature. However, venturing into my adolescence and studying English Literature at university gave me the tools to really start to explore poetry as an art form. There is something so sentimental about poetry that distinguishes it from the other arts. All art forms have emotional intent: music, films, theatre, any one of these forms can make an individual feel something. However, there is something so profoundly beautiful about poetry that I don’t think any other form of art has produced such sensibility. And mostly, it can truly make me feel so alive.

My poetry passion happened rather randomly. It was one day, I was experiencing something personal (I liked a boy I shouldn’t have, not that groundbreaking, I have experienced worse), and I had the thought ‘I am going to write a poem on this’. I had never written poetry until this point, and for how much a part of my life it is now, you’d think I had been reading/writing it my entire life. From the minute I felt the feeling writing poetry gave me, since that day, I have never put my pen down. I felt seen, I felt heard, everything just made sense. Which was peculiar because it was still my words, but I felt even more connected to myself than ever before. It was like a friend greeting me. I was ridiculously sentimental towards myself, and I had finally found an outlet for it.

The misconception regarding poetry is ‘they are saying so many words just get to the point’ or ‘what are they even saying’, look, you either get it or you don’t and the people that do, feel connected to each other in ways of utter sheer companionship. I believe anyone can write poetry, and what determines you as a poet/writer is based on your own interpretation. What makes a poet? What makes a writer? To me, poetry is a rhythm of words, a harmony of imagination, imagery that meets the soul, but I am also a believer that there shouldn’t be a rulebook for poetry. A lot of my poetry does not stick to a rhyme scheme, as I prefer the sporadic, confessional form. I feel I am really getting my ideas across when I just write what comes off my pen. I don’t think we should limit ourselves. It’s just not what Sylvia Plath would want from a young woman like me.

As Imperceptibly as grief,

Emily Dickinson, 1880

As imperceptibly as grief
The summer lapsed away, —
Too imperceptible, at last,
To seem like perfidy.
A quietness distilled,
As twilight long begun,
Or Nature, spending with herself
Sequestered afternoon.
The dusk drew earlier in,
The morning foreign shone, —
A courteous, yet harrowing grace,
As guest who would be gone.

And thus, without a wing,
Or service of a keel,
Our summer made her light escape
Into the beautiful

This post-romanticism poem is one of the most beautifully written descriptions of grief I have ever read. As someone who has experienced a large amount of grief in her life, the nature imagery, combined with the sentimental nature of one’s own emotions, perfectly executes how it feels to go through the stages of grief. How grief is always looming, how the dusk draws earlier in, however, one eventually makes a light escape into the beautiful, perfectly describes how it feels to find oneself again after being a victim of grief, darkness, and conflict. How, despite summer ending and the ways of autumn taking control, there is a sense of acceptance within the seasons changing and finally, within your grief.

Poetry has a way of connecting to one’s mind so beautifully and holds such power. I don’t know what I would do without poetry in my life now. I have never claimed to be the next Emily Dickinson, but reading and feeling inspired by her vulnerability is enough for me.

Continue to write and most importantly continue to be inspired!

All my love,

Rosie

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