destinylaharris

Tag: personal growth

  • 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?

  • 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. 🖤

  • 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?

  • If you had a time machine and could send just one message to your past self, what would it say?

    If I had a time machine and could send one message to my past self, I think I’d tell her:

    You make it.

    I know you don’t believe me.

    Actually, I know you’re probably rolling your eyes at me right now because you’ve already decided you won’t.

    You’ve spent so much of your life fighting with yourself. With food. With your body. With your own reflection. You’ve hurt yourself because sometimes physical pain felt easier to understand than whatever was happening inside your head.

    And there will come a point when you don’t just think about dying.

    You’ll make a plan.

    You’ll decide you’re not going to make it to 30.

    But you do.

    You’re 33 now.

    And, because apparently we like to overachieve, you’re about to spend the next several months in medically induced menopause. 😂☠️

    I know. I KNOW.

    Thirty-three and menopause was definitely not on the bingo card.

    But here’s the part I really wish you could see:

    You’re doing it because you’re trying to give yourself a better chance at having a baby.

    You.

    The girl who couldn’t picture herself making it to 30 is 33 years old and planning for a child.

    You’re planning a future.

    And there’s something else you’re definitely not going to believe.

    Remember that 18-year-old who walked out in the middle of his shift on a busy night?

    The one who, for some reason, you just knew was going to leave an impression on your life?

    Yeah.

    Him. 😂

    You’re both living completely different lives right now. You’re married. He’s engaged. And no, before your brain goes there, absolutely nothing is happening between the two of you.

    But you were right about one thing.

    He does leave an impression on your life.

    You just have absolutely no idea how big of one yet.

    Years from now, he’ll come back into your life permanently.

    He’ll become your best friend.

    And somewhere along the way, without either of you really realizing when it happened, that friendship will turn into something neither of you saw coming.

    And this is the part you’re really going to have trouble believing:

    You’re going to fall completely in love with him.

    Yes.

    A man. 😂

    I know.

    You’re still bisexual. You’re still ridiculously attracted to women. Apparently men, on the other hand, are going to have exactly one exception.

    Him.

    Turns out, you don’t fall in love with him because he’s a man.

    You fall in love with him because he’s him.

    And one day, that 18-year-old who walked out in the middle of his shift on a busy night—the one you somehow knew you weren’t going to forget—is going to be sitting beside you while you plan a life together.

    A home.

    A family.

    Even a child.

    And the craziest part?

    He’ll change your life without ever setting out to.

    He won’t rescue you.

    I need you to understand that part.

    Nobody swoops in and magically fixes everything that happened to you. The things you’ve survived don’t disappear. Some of them will follow you longer than you think they should.

    Even years later, you’ll occasionally see a woman in public who looks just enough like someone from your past that your body reacts before your brain can remind it that you’re safe.

    Healing doesn’t erase the past.

    But your life gets bigger than it.

    And that boy won’t save you.

    He’ll just be there.

    He’ll become your best friend. Your safe place. The person you laugh with, annoy, cuddle, build ridiculous little memories with, and eventually start imagining an entire future beside.

    And somewhere along the way, without either of you realizing it was happening, you’ll stop counting down the years you have left.

    You’ll start thinking about all the years you still want.

    You’ll start thinking about a baby.

    You’ll start thinking about growing older.

    You’ll start making plans that stretch years into the future.

    And someday you’re going to realize something that would probably make you cry if I told you right now:

    You didn’t just make it past 30.

    You built a life you actually want to stay for.

    So if I could tell you only one thing, I guess it wouldn’t actually be some profound piece of advice.

    I’d just tell you to stick around.

    Because I know you can’t see her yet—

    but 33-year-old you is waiting.

    And she has plans.

  • 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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