destinylaharris

Category: Between the Lines

🖤 Between the Lines #11: What the Dead Keep

I think one of the strangest things about grief is that you don’t always miss the huge moments first.

Sometimes you miss the stupid little things.

What flowers somebody hated.

How slowly they drank their wine.

The sound they thought was funny.

The person you loved is gone, but Tuesday still happens.

And I think that is really what this poem became about for me.

Not refusing to let someone go.

Not being unable to move on.

Just the quiet, stubborn way love can keep making room for someone who is no longer physically there.

Because there is a difference between accepting that someone died—

and deciding that death gets to erase them.

This is What the Dead Keep.

What the Dead Keep

Every night,

someone leaves flowers
on a grave

whose name
has long withered away.

Not roses.

She hated roses.

He remembers that.

Even now.

Even after rain
has eaten the letters
from the stone

and moss has filled
what little remains.

He brings lilies.

Sometimes dahlias.

Once,

in the middle of winter,

he walked three miles
through snow

with violets
hidden beneath his coat

so the frost
wouldn’t touch them.

By morning,

they were frozen anyway.

He came back
the next night.

He always comes back.

The cemetery gate
screams when he opens it.

He never oils the hinge.

She used to love
that sound.

Said it made the place
feel haunted.

He had laughed then.

“It’s a cemetery.”

She smiled.

“Exactly.”

Now,

he would give anything

to hear her laugh
at him again.

So every night,

he kneels
in the dirt.

Pulls weeds
from around the stone.

Brushes dead leaves
from her name.

Runs his thumb
through the shallow grooves

as though touching
the letters

might somehow
still count

as touching her.

Sometimes
he talks.

Nothing important.

The neighbor
finally cut down
that awful tree.

The roof leaks again.

He burned dinner
on Tuesday.

The moon is full.

He tells her
the ordinary things

because death
already took
everything else.

He refuses
to let it have

Tuesday.

Sometimes,

he brings two glasses
of wine.

Pours hers
into the earth.

“You always drank too slowly.”

The soil turns dark.

He drinks alone.

Years pass.

The groundskeeper changes.

Then changes again.

Houses rise
beyond the cemetery walls.

Children become old enough
to have children.

People stop visiting
the graves nearby.

Photographs fade.

Names disappear.

Stone forgets
what flesh once was.

But every night,

flowers.

Fresh.

Carefully cut.

Placed beneath
a name

no living person
seems to recognize.

Eventually,

people begin telling stories.

A grieving husband.

A ghost.

A madman.

A lover
who cannot let go.

They are wrong
about one thing.

He did let go.

He let go
of her hand

the night
it became too cold
to hold him back.

He let strangers
carry her away.

Let them close
the coffin.

Let dirt strike wood

one handful
at a time.

He let go

because the living
are forced

to do terrible things
with their hands.

But love—

love was never buried.

So tonight,

he comes again.

Slower now.

His hands shake
around a bundle
of white lilies.

He lowers himself
beside her

with more difficulty
than he used to.

His knees sink
into wet earth.

For a long time,

he says nothing.

Then he places
the flowers down.

Straightens each stem.

Wipes a smear of mud
from the stone.

And rests his forehead
against her name.

“I’m tired, darling.”

The cemetery
does not answer.

It never does.

He smiles anyway.

Small.

Almost embarrassed.

Like the young man
who once stood
on her doorstep

holding flowers

and trying desperately
not to crush them.

“Tomorrow, then.”

He kisses
two fingers

and presses them
to the stone.

Then leaves.

The gate screams
behind him.

Morning comes.

The lilies remain.

Then another night.

And another.

But no footsteps
cross the cemetery.

No hands
clear the leaves.

No voice
complains about the weather.

For the first time
in sixty-three years,

her grave

is alone.

Until spring.

When the groundskeeper
finds something strange.

Two graves.

Side by side.

One stone
so old

its name has nearly
disappeared.

The other,

new.

And growing
between them,

where no one
remembers planting anything,

a cluster

of white lilies.

Between the Lines

This poem looks like a ghost story.

There’s an old cemetery.

A screaming gate.

A disappearing name.

A man who comes every night for sixty-three years.

Flowers growing between two graves at the end.

But I don’t actually think this is a poem about ghosts.

I think it’s about being remembered after the world has stopped remembering you.

The stone is failing.

Rain is eating the letters.

Moss is filling the grooves.

Eventually, nobody seems to know who the woman buried there even was.

But he does.

And not in some grand, romanticized way where she becomes perfect because she died.

He remembers that she hated roses.

That matters to me.

He doesn’t bring her the flower people are supposed to bring the dead.

He brings her flowers.

Lilies.

Dahlias.

Violets he tries to protect from the snow even though they freeze anyway.

He remembers her jokes.

Her habits.

The tiny things that made her a person.

Death gets the body.

Time gets the photograph.

Weather eventually gets the name carved into stone.

But he keeps the details.

“He refuses to let it have Tuesday.”

This might be my favorite part of the whole poem.

Because grief is usually written around the enormous things.

The funeral.

The final goodbye.

The empty side of the bed.

The anniversary.

But losing someone also means losing the person you would have told about Tuesday.

The roof leaked.

The neighbor finally cut down the tree.

You burned dinner.

Nothing important happened.

And you still would have told them.

He keeps bringing her the ordinary life she would have been part of.

Death already took the things he couldn’t stop it from taking.

He isn’t giving it the mundane stuff too.

Not Tuesday.

“A lover who cannot let go.”

That is what people eventually decide he is.

But they’re wrong.

He did let go.

Literally.

And I think this is probably the hardest part of the poem for me:

He let go

because the living
are forced

to do terrible things
with their hands.

There is something cruel about how physical death is for the people left behind.

Someone has to release the hand.

Someone has to let strangers take the body.

Someone has to close the coffin.

Someone has to leave the cemetery.

His continuing to love her afterward does not mean he failed to accept that she died.

He knows she is dead.

The poem never gives him an answer.

“The cemetery does not answer. It never does.”

He just doesn’t believe acceptance requires forgetting.

And neither do I.

“Tomorrow, then.”

By the time he comes for the last time, he is old.

His hands shake.

His knees hurt.

Everything around him has changed.

But he is still carrying white lilies.

Then, for a moment, he becomes that young man again—

standing on her doorstep with flowers and trying not to crush them.

I love that image because sixty-three years disappear for a second.

Then he says:

“Tomorrow, then.”

And there isn’t one.

Not for him.

That hurts me more than some huge final goodbye ever could.

Because most people don’t know when something is the last time.

The last conversation.

The last ordinary Tuesday.

The last see you tomorrow.

Sometimes you only realize afterward that tomorrow belonged to somebody else.

And then there are the lilies.

I deliberately don’t explain them.

Maybe somebody planted them.

Maybe they grew there naturally.

Maybe it is coincidence.

Maybe it is something else.

I don’t really care.

For sixty-three years, he carried flowers to her.

Then he dies.

And in spring, flowers grow between them.

Not on her grave.

Not on his.

Between.

I don’t need that ending to prove an afterlife.

I just like the idea that after all those years spent crossing the distance between the living and the dead, the poem ends with something quietly growing in the space that separated them.

What the Dead Keep

Maybe that’s what we really keep when somebody dies.

Not the person.

We don’t get that choice.

We keep fragments.

Habits.

Private jokes.

Things they hated.

Things they would have laughed at.

The stupid ordinary details that don’t sound important until suddenly they are all you have left.

The stone eventually forgets her.

The world mostly does too.

He doesn’t.

And then eventually, he is gone as well.

But for one spring—

white lilies grow between them.

Maybe nobody visiting that cemetery knows why.

Maybe nobody remembers either of them.

But something is still there.

And maybe that is as close as any of us get to staying.

Until next time,

— Destiny

P.S. If someone you loved were gone, what ordinary little thing about them do you think you’d be most afraid of forgetting? 🖤

October 8, 2026
Between the Lines #10: The Siren Who Could Not Sing

There are some poems that start with an idea.

And then there are some that quietly become about something much bigger while you’re writing them.

The Siren Who Could Not Sing started with a simple question:

What happens to a siren who can’t sing?

Not one whose voice was stolen.

Not one who eventually discovers some hidden, magical song.

Just—

a siren who cannot do the one thing everyone says a siren is supposed to do.

And the more I sat with that idea, the less this poem became about sirens.

Because I think a lot of us know what it feels like to live inside an expectation we were never able to meet.

The Siren Who Could Not Sing

They knew something was wrong
the first time I opened my mouth
and the sea stayed still.

No sailors turned their heads.

No ships changed course.

No man forgot
the name of the woman
waiting for him at home.

Nothing happened.

My sisters sang
and entire oceans
leaned closer.

I sang—

and heard only
the small, broken sound
of breath.

A siren
without a voice.

There are cruelties
even mythology
doesn’t prepare you for.

To be born
with a name
that promises something

your body
cannot give.

They tried to teach me.

Again.

Again.

Breathe deeper.

Try harder.

You aren’t trying.

As though effort
could grow music
inside a throat
that had never learned
how to hold it.

Eventually,

they stopped asking me
to sing with them.

That hurt more.

I would sit
on the rocks
and watch my sisters

become everything
we were created to be.

Beautiful.

Terrible.

Unavoidable.

Their songs
crossed miles of water.

Mine couldn’t cross
my own lips.

So I became useful
in other ways.

I watched the horizon.

Counted ships.

Collected what the ocean
returned.

Learned the names
of constellations
because stars
never asked me
to perform.

Still,

I hated them sometimes.

My sisters.

Not because
they could sing.

Because they never had
to wonder

who they would be
if they couldn’t.

Do you know
what it does to you

to lose something
everyone insists
is the reason
you exist?

You start believing
absence
is the same thing
as failure.

You start introducing yourself
with an apology.

You start thinking

almost

is another word
for worthless.

Then one night,

a ship broke apart
against the rocks.

There had been no song.

No seduction.

Only a storm
with no interest
in who deserved
to survive it.

A sailor washed ashore.

Alive.

Barely.

He looked at me
and begged,

“Please.”

I opened my mouth.

Nothing.

Of course.

So I didn’t sing.

I pulled him
from the water.

Stayed beside him
until morning.

And when he woke,

he didn’t ask
why I had no song.

He didn’t ask
what kind of siren
couldn’t lure a man
to his death.

He only said,

“You saved me.”

I had never heard
those words before.

All my life,

I had been taught
that a siren’s power

was measured
by how many people
she could make
follow her voice.

No one ever told me

there might be power
in refusing
to let someone drown.

My sisters still sing.

The sea still listens.

Ships still tremble
when their voices
cross the water.

And me?

I am still silent.

Some things
do not grow back
just because
we finally understand
their absence.

But I no longer
open my mouth
and wait for music

to prove
I belong here.

I am a siren.

Not despite
the silence.

Not because of it.

I simply am.

And perhaps
the cruelest thing
they ever taught me

was that the thing
I was missing

was the thing

that made me

whole.

The part of this poem that sits heaviest with me isn’t actually the silence.

It’s this:

You aren’t trying.

Because how many times do we say some version of that to people?

Try harder.

Push yourself.

Everybody else can do it.

You just need to practice.

You just need to want it badly enough.

As though effort is some magical currency we can exchange for ability.

As though wanting something badly enough guarantees our bodies, our minds, or our circumstances will cooperate.

Sometimes they don’t.

And sometimes the cruelest thing you can do to someone who is already struggling is convince them that their inability is proof they didn’t try hard enough.

The siren spends years believing there must be something wrong with her because everyone around her possesses the thing she is missing.

Her sisters don’t even have to think about singing.

They simply open their mouths—

and the world responds.

Meanwhile, she keeps trying to become something that was never going to happen.

And I think comparison hurts the most when you’re comparing yourself to people who have never had to question the thing you’re fighting so hard to become.

They don’t know what it feels like to sit on the rocks and watch.

They don’t know what it feels like to be almost what everyone expected.

They don’t have to wonder:

Who am I if I can’t do the thing everyone says makes me who I am?

That question is the real heart of this poem.

Because we attach identity to things constantly.

A good mother does this.

A successful person looks like this.

A strong person handles things this way.

A woman should be this.

A man should provide that.

A writer should write like this.

A body should be able to do that.

And when we don’t fit whatever definition we were handed?

We start shrinking ourselves around the missing piece.

We introduce ourselves with an apology.

We explain ourselves before anyone even asks.

We start treating different like it means defective.

That’s why I didn’t want her voice to magically appear at the end.

I could have done that.

The sailor could have awakened, she could have opened her mouth, and suddenly some beautiful song could have poured out.

It would have been neat.

Hopeful.

Very fairy-tale.

And I would have hated it.

Because then the poem would still be saying she needed the song.

She would simply have suffered long enough to finally earn it.

No.

She never sings.

The thing she cannot do at the beginning is still something she cannot do at the end.

Because sometimes healing doesn’t give you back what you lost.

Sometimes acceptance doesn’t fix anything.

Sometimes understanding yourself better does not magically change the thing you had to learn to live without.

And you are still allowed to be whole.

That’s why this part matters so much to me:

I am a siren.

Not despite the silence.

Not because of it.

I simply am.

Not despite.

Because even that can become another kind of cage.

Look how successful she became despite this.

Look how strong she is despite that.

Look what she accomplished even though she is missing something.

Sometimes I think we become so obsessed with turning every difference into an inspirational story that we accidentally keep reinforcing the idea that there was something wrong with the person to begin with.

She doesn’t need to become extraordinary because she cannot sing.

She doesn’t need her silence to become a superpower.

She doesn’t need to prove that losing one thing gave her something better.

She is simply a siren.

Full stop.

And then there’s the sailor.

All her life, she has been told that a siren’s power is measured by destruction.

How many sailors turn their ships.

How many men follow the voice.

How many bodies the ocean takes.

Then someone finally looks at her and says:

You saved me.

And suddenly the definition of power changes.

Maybe the thing everyone around you values isn’t actually the thing that deserves to be valued.

Maybe being good at what your world rewards doesn’t automatically make that thing good.

Maybe you can spend your entire life believing you failed a test without ever stopping to ask:

Who wrote the test?

Our silent siren cannot lure sailors toward the rocks.

But when one reaches them anyway—

she pulls him out.

And for the first time, she understands that she was measuring herself with a ruler she never chose.

That might be my favorite thing hiding between these lines.

She doesn’t finally become the siren everyone expected.

She stops needing to.

And I think there is an enormous difference between the two.

Maybe becoming whole isn’t always about finding the missing piece.

Maybe sometimes it’s realizing you were never a collection of missing pieces in the first place.

Until next time,

—Destiny

P.S. Have you ever spent so much time trying to become who you thought you were supposed to be that you forgot to ask who you actually were?

October 1, 2026
Between the Lines #9: The Missing Second

Some poems begin with a story already attached to them.

This one didn’t.

It started with one line:

The clock skipped a tick
and my heart skipped a beat.

I liked the way those two things mirrored each other—the clock and the heart both missing something at exactly the same moment.

But then I started thinking about the second itself.

If the clock skipped it…

where did it go?

And what if it wasn’t actually empty?

What if, somewhere between one tick and the next, time stopped long enough to show you everything that could still happen?

That question became The Missing Second.

The Missing Second

The clock skipped a tick
and my heart skipped a beat.

For one second,

time forgot
what it was supposed to do.

The room stopped breathing.

The curtains hung
perfectly still.

The dust suspended itself
in the sunlight

like even gravity
had been told

to wait.

And somewhere

between one second
and the next,

I lived an entire life.

I saw myself older.

Laugh lines
where worry used to live.

Silver threaded
through my hair.

Hands that finally stopped
apologizing
for taking up space.

I saw people
I haven’t met yet.

Rooms
I’ve never entered.

Photographs
that haven’t been taken.

I heard laughter
belonging to voices

I don’t know.

Yet.

I watched myself
lose people.

Find others.

Break.

Heal.

Break again.

I learned
that some promises last.

Some don’t.

Some people leave
without becoming villains.

Some people stay
without needing to become heroes.

I forgave things
I still swear
I never will.

I stopped waiting
for apologies

that were never coming.

I looked into a mirror

and recognized

the woman

looking back.

For once,

I didn’t ask her

what was wrong with her.

I asked

if she was happy.

She smiled.

Then—

tick.

The curtains moved.

The dust fell.

The world continued

as though nothing

had happened.

No one looked up.

No one asked

where I’d been.

The clock simply moved

from one second

to another.

But I couldn’t.

Because somewhere

inside the second

that never existed,

I had met

every version of myself

I could still become.

And suddenly

I understood

why my heart

had skipped too.

For one impossible moment,

it wasn’t afraid

of running out of time.

It had simply

seen

how much life

could still fit

inside it.

Between the Lines

For a poem about the future, I didn’t want The Missing Second to predict anything.

There are no names.

No specific places.

No exact future waiting at the end of it.

Instead, there are pieces.

People I haven’t met.

Rooms I haven’t entered.

Photographs that haven’t been taken.

Voices I don’t recognize.

I think that’s what makes the future in this poem feel possible to me. It isn’t promising that everything works out exactly the way I want it to.

Actually, it very specifically doesn’t.

I lose people.

I break.

I heal.

And then I break again.

Because seeing an entire life inside that second wouldn’t mean seeing a perfect one.

It would mean seeing a whole one.

There’s a difference.

Yet.

There’s one tiny word sitting by itself in this poem:

I heard laughter
belonging to voices

I don’t know.

Yet.

I gave “Yet.” its own line because I wanted it to interrupt the thought.

“I don’t know” feels complete.

“I don’t know yet” doesn’t.

That one word leaves something open.

Somewhere in the future could be a person I’ve never met who will eventually become impossible to imagine my life without.

There could be a room I’ve never entered that someday feels like home.

There could be a photograph I haven’t taken yet that someday becomes one I can’t look at without remembering everything surrounding it.

I can’t know any of that from where I’m standing now.

That’s the point.

Yet.

Not Everyone Has to Be a Villain or a Hero

These are probably some of my favorite lines in the poem:

Some people leave
without becoming villains.

Some people stay
without needing to become heroes.

I didn’t want the future life inside that second divided neatly between people who stayed and people who hurt me.

Some people are only meant to exist in certain parts of our lives.

Someone leaving doesn’t automatically erase everything that came before it.

And someone staying doesn’t mean they have to save us.

Sometimes people are simply part of the story for however long they’re part of it.

I think there’s something peaceful about imagining a future where I understand that.

The Woman Waiting Inside the Second

Then there’s the mirror.

Of everything that happens inside this enormous life squeezed into one impossible second, this is one of the quietest moments:

I looked into a mirror

and recognized

the woman

looking back.

For once,

I didn’t ask her

what was wrong with her.

I asked

if she was happy.

She smiled.

She doesn’t tell me what happens.

She doesn’t explain how I got there.

She doesn’t warn me about anything coming.

She just smiles.

And I think I like it better that way.

Because the missing second isn’t supposed to hand me a map of my future.

It’s only supposed to show me that there is one.

Then—Tick.

The clock eventually has to move again.

I knew from the beginning that whatever happened inside that second couldn’t follow the speaker back into the room.

The curtains move.

The dust falls.

Nobody notices anything happened.

The clock simply continues doing what clocks do.

But the person watching it doesn’t return quite as easily.

That’s why the opening line comes back in a different way at the end.

At first:

The clock skipped a tick
and my heart skipped a beat.

It sounds like something is wrong.

By the end, we finally understand why the heart followed the clock.

For one impossible moment,

it wasn’t afraid

of running out of time.

It had simply

seen

how much life

could still fit

inside it.

And that’s what this poem eventually became for me.

It isn’t really about stopping time.

It’s about having more of it.

Not knowing how much.

Not knowing what happens inside it.

Not knowing who comes, who goes, what hurts, what heals, or who I’ll be when I reach the other side of all those years.

Just knowing there are still blank spaces.

There are still people I don’t know.

There are still photographs that haven’t been taken.

There are still versions of me I haven’t met.

The clock is going to keep ticking either way.

But maybe every once in a while, it’s worth remembering how much life can happen between one tick and the next.

Until next time,
—Destiny

P.S. If time skipped one second and let you glimpse your future, would you look—or would you rather not know?

September 23, 2026
Between the Lines #8: Little Star

Some poems start with an idea.

Others start with a line you’ve known so long that you almost don’t hear the words anymore.

“Twinkle, twinkle, little star…”

It’s one of the first songs a lot of us learn as children. We sing it before we know what stars actually are. Before we understand distance. Before we understand that the light reaching us might have been traveling for years.

And before we learn that sometimes, the thing we’re looking at may already be gone.

That thought stuck with me.

Because there’s something strangely human about that.

So I followed it.

And it got darker than the nursery rhyme. 😅

Little Star

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

I used to wonder
what you are.

Before I learned
that some lights

are already dead.

That sometimes
we spend our whole lives

looking at something

that disappeared
centuries ago.

No one tells children that.

We point toward the sky
and call it beautiful.

Make wishes
on burning things.

Teach them
to close their eyes

and ask the universe

for whatever
their tiny hearts desire.

I wonder

how many wishes

were sent

to something

that wasn’t there

to receive them.

Maybe that’s why
mine never came true.

I used to lie
beneath my blankets

and watch the stars
through my window.

I thought

they were watching back.

Guardians.

Tiny holes in heaven

letting the light through.

I didn’t know yet

that darkness

was the natural state
of things.

That light

had to fight

just to reach us.

Sometimes,

I still look up.

Not to wish.

I stopped doing that
a long time ago.

Now I count

the dead things

still shining.

One.

Two.

Three.

There are too many.

And I wonder

how long

a person can disappear

before everyone else

notices

their light

is only a memory.

How many times

have I smiled

after something inside me

had already gone dark?

How many people

have looked at me

and thought,

She’s doing so well.

Because they were seeing

light

that left me

years ago?

Maybe we are all

a little like stars.

Carrying old versions
of ourselves

across impossible distances.

Letting people

make wishes

on pieces of us

that no longer exist.

Twinkle, twinkle,

little star.

I finally know

what you are.

Proof

that something

doesn’t have to be alive

for its absence

to take years

to reach us.

Between the Lines

What got me about the idea behind this poem wasn’t really the stars.

It was the delay.

The idea that light can keep traveling after its source has changed—or disappeared entirely.

And I started thinking about how often people do that, too.

There are versions of ourselves that other people continue to see long after we’ve stopped being them.

Maybe they remember the version of you who tolerated things you don’t tolerate anymore.

The version who trusted more easily.

The version who was louder.

Softer.

Happier.

More naive.

Maybe they’re looking at who you were five years ago and assuming that person is still standing in front of them.

And sometimes, it happens in reverse.

Sometimes we’re the ones sending out old light.

We smile.

We go to work.

We answer messages.

We make jokes.

We tell people we’re fine.

And from where everyone else is standing, we might genuinely look fine.

They aren’t necessarily ignoring what’s happening inside us.

They may simply be seeing the light that reached them.

That’s where the line—

How many people
have looked at me
and thought,

She’s doing so well.

—came from.

There’s something sad about realizing that someone can look directly at you and still be seeing an older version of you.

But I don’t think Little Star is entirely about sadness.

I think it’s also about change.

We spend our lives leaving versions of ourselves behind.

Some disappear quietly.

Some take years to let go of.

Some probably still exist in somebody else’s memory exactly as we were when they last knew us.

And maybe that’s okay.

Because the person I was isn’t necessarily gone just because I’m not her anymore.

Some of her light made it here.

I carry pieces of her.

Other people carry pieces of her.

And someday, the person I am right now will probably become another one of those distant versions too.

Still visible.

Still affecting something.

Just no longer the whole story.

Maybe that’s what I like most about the stars.

We look up and think we’re seeing what is.

Sometimes we’re actually seeing what was.

And unless we look a little closer, we may never know the difference.

Until next time,

—Destiny

P.S. Some things keep shining long after they’ve changed. Maybe people do, too.

September 17, 2026
Between the Lines #7

The Dark

I write about darkness a lot.

Night.

Shadows.

Moonlight.

Ghosts.

The things that hide in corners and the things we carry where no one else can see them.

If you’ve read much of my writing, you could probably assume I find some kind of comfort in the dark.

And maybe sometimes I do.

But then I wrote a poem that started with:

I hate the dark.

And I meant it.

The Dark

I hate the dark.

It reminds me of myself.

Not because I am cruel.

Not because I was born
wanting to swallow light.

But because I’ve spent
so much of my life
learning how to survive
where the sun
couldn’t reach.

People romanticize darkness.

They give it stars.

They give it moons.

They write poems
about how beautiful
the night can be.

They forget

how cold it is.

How quiet.

How easy it is
to mistake loneliness
for peace.

I know darkness intimately.

I know the way
it settles into a room
before anyone notices.

The way it convinces you
that silence
is the same thing
as healing.

The way it teaches you
to become invisible
just to make it
through another day.

I hate the dark.

Because every time
I walk into it,

I meet another version
of myself.

The little girl
who kept waiting
for someone
to come looking.

The teenager
who mistook hurting
for relief.

The woman
who kept shrinking
so other people
could feel taller.

They are all there.

Patient.

Waiting for me
like ghosts
that never learned
how to leave home.

Sometimes I wonder
if Nyx recognizes me.

If the goddess of night
looks at me
with something
that almost resembles pity.

Or maybe recognition.

Maybe she knows
that not everyone
who carries darkness

belongs to it.

Maybe she knows
there is a difference
between becoming familiar
with the night

and calling it home.

I hate the dark.

Not because it reminds me
of what I’ve survived.

But because for so many years,

I couldn’t tell

where it ended—

and where I began.

Now,

I’m learning
the hardest thing
I’ve ever had to learn:

Darkness
can shape you

without defining you.

And maybe

that’s the first light

I’ve ever trusted.

I think sometimes we become so familiar with something that we stop realizing it isn’t supposed to feel like home.

That can happen with sadness.

With loneliness.

With survival mode.

With the parts of ourselves we built because, at the time, we needed them.

Stay quiet.

Don’t take up too much space.

Don’t need too much.

Don’t trust too easily.

Keep going.

Survive first.

Feel it later.

You do something long enough and eventually it stops feeling like something you do.

It starts feeling like who you are.

That’s the darkness in this poem.

Not evil.

Not something lurking beneath the bed.

Not even necessarily sadness.

Familiarity.

That’s why I wrote:

How easy it is
to mistake loneliness
for peace.

There is a difference between being at peace and simply becoming accustomed to being alone with something.

There is a difference between healing and going quiet.

There is a difference between no longer talking about what hurt you and no longer being hurt by it.

I think I’ve confused those things before.

Maybe that’s why all those different versions of me are still standing in the darkness of this poem.

The little girl.

The teenager.

The woman.

None of them disappeared when the next one arrived.

And I don’t think healing requires them to.

They aren’t monsters that need to be defeated.

They’re evidence.

They existed.

They survived.

They became part of me.

But being part of me isn’t the same thing as being all of me.

That distinction became the most important part of this poem.

And then there’s Nyx.

The goddess of night herself.

I didn’t want her to appear as something frightening. I didn’t even want her to save me.

I wanted her to recognize me.

Because who better to understand that carrying darkness doesn’t mean you belong to it than the night itself?

Maybe she could look at someone who has spent years walking through darkness and understand something that person is only beginning to understand:

there is a difference
between becoming familiar
with the night

and calling it home.

I think that might be my favorite idea in the poem.

Because for a long time, I thought healing meant becoming someone untouched by the things that happened before.

Someone lighter.

Someone different.

Someone who didn’t carry any of it anymore.

I don’t think that now.

Some things shape us permanently.

There are things we survive that change the way we love, trust, react, protect ourselves, and move through the world.

But being shaped by something doesn’t mean surrendering your identity to it.

You can carry darkness without being dark.

You can remember pain without living inside it.

You can know the night intimately and still choose to walk toward morning.

Maybe that’s why the poem doesn’t end with the darkness disappearing.

It ends with light.

Not sunlight.

Not some enormous, blinding revelation.

Just the smallest realization:

Darkness
can shape you

without defining you.

And maybe

that’s the first light

I’ve ever trusted.

The darkness is still there.

The difference is that now—

I know where it ends and I begin.

Until next time,

—Destiny

P.S. Maybe we don’t have to hate every version of ourselves that learned how to survive in the dark. Some of them are the reason we lived long enough to find the light. 🖤

September 10, 2026
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?

September 3, 2026
Between the Lines #5: Monsters

I used to think growing up meant learning that monsters weren’t real.

Monsters

As we got older,
the monsters crept from under our beds
to inside our heads.

We stopped checking closets.

Stopped leaving
the hallway light on.

Stopped pulling blankets
over our faces
because someone told us

there was nothing there.

And we believed them.

For a while.

We laughed
at the children we used to be.

Afraid of shadows.

Afraid of footsteps.

Afraid of something
reaching from beneath the bed
and grabbing our ankles.

We didn’t know yet

that monsters grow up too.

They stop hiding
beneath mattresses

and start answering
to ordinary names.

Anxiety.

Grief.

Shame.

Trauma.

Loneliness.

The voice that says
everyone you love
will eventually leave.

The memory
that waits until 2 a.m.
to remind you
it never really went anywhere.

The fear
that maybe you are difficult to love.

The thought
that everyone else
was given instructions
for being alive

and somehow
yours got lost.

As children,

we could run
to another room.

Climb into someone’s bed.

Whisper,

“I’m scared.”

And sometimes
that was enough.

Someone would check the closet.

Look beneath the bed.

Turn on the light.

Promise us

nothing was there.

God,

I miss when fear
could be proven wrong
with a flashlight.

Because now

the monster knows my name.

It knows my history.

It knows exactly
which memories
to pull from the shelf

when I am finally
having a good day.

It knows
which insecurities
still have teeth.

It knows how to sound
exactly like me.

That’s the cruelest part.

Eventually,

you stop knowing

which thoughts
belong to you

and which ones
belong to the monster.

So I became
my own night-light.

My own open door.

My own voice
in the darkness saying,

“There’s nothing there.”

Even when
I wasn’t sure.

Especially when
I wasn’t sure.

As we got older,

the monsters crept
from under our beds

to inside our heads.

And maybe growing up

was never about
discovering

that monsters
aren’t real.

Maybe it was realizing

no one else

can check beneath the bed

for us anymore.

So now,

when the darkness comes,

I sit beside
the frightened child
still living inside me.

I take her hand.

I turn on the light.

And together,

we remind the monsters

that this time—

they’re the ones

who should be afraid of us.

Between the Lines

When I was little, monsters were easy.

Not necessarily less scary—but easier.

They lived under beds.

Inside closets.

In dark hallways.

Behind doors that looked completely harmless during the day but somehow became suspicious as hell once the lights went out.

And when you were scared, you could call for someone.

Someone bigger would come into the room, turn on the light, open the closet, look underneath the bed, and show you there was nothing there.

Fear could be proven wrong.

I think that’s what sits underneath this poem more than anything else.

God, I miss when fear could be proven wrong with a flashlight.

Because somewhere along the way, the monsters changed.

They stopped having claws and shadows and glowing eyes.

They became things like anxiety.

Grief.

Shame.

Trauma.

Loneliness.

Memories.

The things we tell ourselves when it’s late and everything feels heavier than it did during the day.

And nobody can walk into the room and prove those things aren’t there.

Nobody can shine a flashlight underneath your thoughts.

That might be one of the cruelest parts of growing up.

But while writing this poem, I realized something else.

When I was a child, I needed someone else to turn on the light.

Now I can do it myself.

Not always.

Not perfectly.

And sometimes I turn it on with shaking hands.

But I can sit beside the younger versions of myself who are still scared. I can remind them that we survived the things we once thought we wouldn’t. I can question the voice that tells me every fear is a fact simply because it sounds like my own.

Maybe that’s part of growing up, too.

Not becoming fearless.

Not finally reaching some magical age where the monsters disappear.

Just learning that when they come back, you don’t have to hide beneath the blankets anymore.

You can turn on the light yourself.

And maybe, eventually, the monsters learn to be afraid of you.

Until next time,

—Destiny

P.S. What was the thing you were most afraid of in the dark when you were a kid?

August 27, 2026
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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August 20, 2026
Between the Lines #3

Dinner With My Fears

Tonight,

I sat at a table
with all of my fears.

There wasn’t enough room.

Failure arrived first,
still wearing my face.

She smiled politely,
asked if I’d finally accepted
that I’ll never become
everything I dreamed of.

Before I could answer,

Grief pulled out a chair.

She didn’t say much.

She never does.

She just looked at me
like we’d known each other
for years.

We have.

Self-doubt
wouldn’t stop talking.

Every sentence
ended with a question mark.

Are you sure?

What if you’re wrong?

What if they leave when they finally know you?

Loneliness laughed.

Not because anything was funny.

Because she’d already heard
this conversation before.

Fear of failure
ordered another drink.

Fear of being forgotten
kept checking the door
to see if anyone else
was coming.

No one did.

Then…

Abandonment arrived.

The room changed.

Every fear went quiet.

Even Grief
looked away.

She sat across from me
like she’d always owned
that chair.

She didn’t have to introduce herself.

I’ve known her
since I was little.

She folded her hands
and asked,

“How much of yourself did you give away today just to make someone stay?”

I didn’t answer.

She smiled.

She already knew.

She reminded me
of every apology
I never owed.

Every boundary
I called selfish.

Every version of myself
I buried alive
so someone else
wouldn’t feel uncomfortable.

She spoke the longest.

The others
hardly interrupted.

Because every fear
at that table

had learned its language
from her.

Failure said,

“You’ll disappoint them.”

Self-doubt whispered,

“You’re too much.”

Loneliness added,

“No one stays forever.”

Even Grief nodded.

They were all saying
the same thing.

Just with different mouths.

I sat there

listening.

Until something strange happened.

A chair scraped the floor.

Hope.

Late as always.

She looked exhausted.

Like she’d fought traffic
just to get here.

She sat beside me,

not across from me.

She didn’t argue
with my fears.

She simply reached
for my hand.

And for the first time
all evening—

Abandonment

stopped talking.

Because maybe

the loudest voice
at the table

was never the truest one.

Maybe it was just

the oldest.

— Destiny

A little between the lines…

I think fear has a way of disguising itself.

Sometimes it calls itself failure.

Sometimes loneliness.

Sometimes self-doubt.

Sometimes it convinces us that making ourselves smaller is easier than risking someone walking away.

But if you listen long enough, sometimes you realize all those voices learned how to speak from the same place.

I wanted this poem to give those voices bodies.

To sit them around a table.

To let them talk.

And then, eventually, to let Hope pull up a chair.

Not because Hope magically makes fear disappear.

She doesn’t even argue with it.

She just sits beside you.

Sometimes that’s enough to make the oldest voice in the room a little quieter.

Until next time,
— Destiny

P.S. If your fears had a seat at the table, which one would talk the most? 🖤
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August 6, 2026
Between the Lines #2

Darkness, My Old Friend

I am completely at peace as darkness wraps me in her sweet embrace.

I’m not scared.

I’m not worried.

I have no apprehension for what’s to come.

I welcome her like an old friend.

We sit together.

We talk.

We dream about all the could bes and what ifs.

She listens without interruption.

She understands without explanation.

With her, I can be completely honest about who I am.

There are no expectations.

No judgments.

Only acceptance.

“Just breathe,” she whispers each night as she wraps her arms around me, and for a little while, the rest of the world disappears.

Together, we become one.

Every night, without fail, she finds her way back to me.

And every night, we begin another adventure.

Then morning comes.

“Be at peace,” she reminds me as daylight slowly loosens her grip.

She never leaves with sadness.

Only with the quiet promise that she’ll return.

And she always does.

Until next time…

Darkness, my old friend.

I’ll be missing you.

— Destiny

P.S. If this poem spoke to you, I’d love to know what it means to you. I think poetry is at its best when every reader finds something different between the lines. 🖤

August 1, 2026