destinylaharris

Tag: memory

  • Between the Lines #6

    When the Night Whispers Your Name

    There’s something unsettling about hearing your name when no one said it.

    Maybe you’re lying in bed.

    Maybe the house is completely quiet.

    And for half a second, you could swear someone called you.

    Not loudly.

    Just enough to make you stop.

    Listen.

    Maybe even look over your shoulder.

    That was the thought behind When the Night Whispers Your Name.

    At least, that’s where it started.

    Because somewhere while writing it, the person whispering stopped being a ghost.

    And started becoming me.

    When the Night Whispers Your Name

    When the night whispers your name,

    I pretend

    I didn’t hear it.

    I’ve learned

    that some voices

    don’t belong

    to the living.

    Not because they’re ghosts.

    Because memory

    has a remarkable way

    of learning

    how to breathe.

    The daylight

    is kinder.

    It fills empty rooms

    with enough noise

    that I can almost believe

    I’ve become someone else.

    But night—

    night has always

    known the truth.

    It remembers

    every version of me

    I’ve tried

    to outgrow.

    The child

    who mistook silence

    for safety.

    The teenager

    who carried storms

    inside her ribs.

    The woman

    who still apologizes

    before she takes up space.

    They all answer

    when the darkness calls.

    I don’t.

    At least,

    I tell myself

    I don’t.

    But there are evenings

    when I catch myself

    looking over my shoulder

    because I could have sworn

    someone

    just said my name.

    Softly.

    The way people do

    when they love you.

    Or miss you.

    Or mourn you

    before you’re gone.

    Maybe that’s what

    the night has been

    trying to tell me.

    Not that I’m haunted.

    That I have spent

    so many years

    running from myself

    that even my own name

    sounds unfamiliar

    when spoken

    with kindness.

    When the night

    whispers your name,

    listen carefully.

    It may not be

    calling you backward.

    It may be asking

    whether you’ve finally

    become brave enough

    to turn around

    and meet

    the person

    who has been searching

    for you

    all along.

    I think there are certain versions of ourselves we spend years trying to leave behind.

    Not necessarily because we hate who we were.

    Sometimes we just don’t want to remember what that version of us had to carry.

    So we grow.

    We change.

    We get older.

    We build lives around everything that happened afterward.

    And eventually, we start telling ourselves that person doesn’t exist anymore.

    But I don’t think it works like that.

    I think every version of us leaves something behind.

    The child.

    The teenager.

    The person who was scared.

    The person who was angry.

    The person who survived something they didn’t have words for yet.

    They don’t disappear just because we become someone else.

    And sometimes, when everything gets quiet enough, we hear them.

    That’s why I wrote:

    Because memory
    has a remarkable way
    of learning
    how to breathe.

    Memory can feel incredibly alive.

    A smell can bring back a room you haven’t stood in for years.

    A song can bring back a person.

    A sentence can bring back a feeling you thought you’d forgotten.

    And sometimes you can be sitting perfectly still in the present while some part of you is somewhere else entirely.

    That’s its own kind of haunting.

    But I didn’t want this poem to end there.

    Because When the Night Whispers Your Name isn’t really a poem about being haunted by who you used to be.

    It’s about finally turning around.

    There’s a line toward the end that I think holds the entire poem:

    That I have spent
    so many years
    running from myself
    that even my own name
    sounds unfamiliar
    when spoken
    with kindness.

    Sometimes we become so accustomed to criticizing ourselves that kindness feels suspicious.

    Sometimes we’re much better at extending grace to the people we used to be than the person we are right now.

    And sometimes the version of ourselves we’ve been trying so hard to escape isn’t chasing us at all.

    Maybe she’s just waiting to be acknowledged.

    Maybe she wants someone to finally look at her without shame.

    Maybe she wants to hear her own name spoken gently.

    So perhaps when the night whispers your name, you don’t always have to run from it.

    Sometimes you can turn around.

    Sometimes you can listen.

    Sometimes you might discover that the thing you thought was haunting you…

    was simply a piece of yourself waiting for you to come back.

    Until next time,

    — Destiny

    P.S. If you could sit down with one past version of yourself for five minutes, which version would you choose—and what would you tell them?

  • Between the Lines #4: When the Wind Carries Secrets

    Some things are easier to say when you don’t know who’s listening.

    When the wind carries secrets,
    I wonder if mine
    are still looking for me.

    I have whispered so many things
    into the open air—
    names I no longer say aloud,
    prayers that never reached heaven,
    apologies that belonged
    to someone else.

    I imagine the wind
    keeping them all.

    Tucking them beneath its ribs,
    carrying them over oceans,
    through forests,
    past houses where little girls
    still believe their mothers
    will always protect them.

    Maybe that’s why
    it never stops moving.

    Maybe grief
    has made it too heavy
    to rest.

    I have secrets
    that still wake before I do.

    Secrets that smell like hospitals
    and old bedrooms.

    Secrets that remember
    what my body spent years
    trying to forget.

    I don’t think silence
    buries anything.

    I think it teaches memories
    how to echo.

    Sometimes the wind
    finds me again.

    It slips through cracked windows.
    Lifts my hair from my shoulders.
    Whispers my own voice
    back to me—

    only older.

    Softer.

    Like someone
    who survived the telling.

    I wonder
    how many of us
    are breathing
    the same air.

    How many confessions
    have passed through my lungs.

    How many mothers
    never heard the words
    their children carried.

    How many lovers
    mistook silence
    for peace.

    The wind knows.

    It has listened
    to every goodbye
    spoken too late.

    Every I’m sorry
    that arrived
    after the damage.

    Every I love you
    that died
    on the tip of a tongue.

    When the wind carries secrets,

    I hope it carries this one gently—

    I survived.

    Not gracefully.

    Not without breaking.

    But enough

    that I can finally say it

    without whispering.

    And maybe,

    just maybe,

    the wind isn’t carrying my secrets away.

    Maybe

    it’s carrying them

    to someone

    who thought

    they were the only one.

    I think some things become harder to say the longer we carry them.

    Eventually, they stop feeling like words and start feeling like weight.

    That’s where this poem came from.

    I liked the idea of the wind as something that has heard everything—the things we whispered when nobody was around, the apologies we never received, the words we never managed to say, and the stories we spent years keeping quiet.

    But somewhere while writing it, the wind stopped feeling like something that was taking secrets away.

    It started feeling like something connecting us.

    Because maybe the things we’re convinced we have to carry quietly aren’t as uniquely ours as we think.

    Maybe somewhere, someone else has whispered the same thing.

    And maybe surviving something doesn’t always mean being able to talk about it loudly.

    Sometimes being able to finally say, “I survived,” without whispering is enough.

    Until next time,

    —Destiny

    P.S. If the wind could carry away one thing you’ve never been able to say out loud, would you let it?

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