Mecella | A Home For Poets

I remember the moment
like a crack in time,
splitting me open,
leaving everything I thought I was
scattered on the floor.
I stood there,
staring at my reflection,
but I didn’t recognize the person
looking back.
Something was missing,
something I’d lost
that I couldn’t name.

It wasn’t one big thing.
It was small,
like the quiet breaking of a thread
you didn’t even know it was there.
It snapped,
and suddenly,
everything unraveled.
I watched myself come apart
from the inside out,
silently,
hopelessly,
and I didn’t even try to stop it.

I don’t know when I started to slip,
when I stopped being the person
I thought I was.
It happened so slowly,
like a shadow creeping across the ground,
too quiet to notice
until it swallows the light.
And when I finally saw it,
when I finally realized,
it was too late.

The disappointment hit me
like a punch to the gut,
stealing the air from my lungs,
leaving me hollow.
I could feel it,
the weight of it,
pressing down on my chest,
wrapping around my throat,
tightening until all I could do
was standing there,
frozen,
choking on the truth of who I had become.

I wanted to scream,
to rage,
to tear myself apart
and build something new,
someone better,
someone who didn’t make mistakes,
who didn’t let herself fall,
who didn’t fail?
But I couldn’t move.
I couldn’t breathe.
I just stood there,
drowning in the quiet failure
of myself.

I had always been so sure,
so confident of my strength,
of my ability to keep going,
to push through.
But that day,
that moment,
I felt it all slip through my fingers,
like sand I couldn’t hold onto,
no matter how tightly I clenched my fists.

And the worst part?
The worst part was knowing.
I had no one else to blame.
It wasn’t the world; it wasn’t someone else’s fault.
It was me.
I had let myself down.

I had made promises to myself,
silent vows I thought I would never break.
But I broke them,
and I didn’t even realize
until it was too late to fix it.
The cracks were already there,
and now they were too deep to ignore.

I wanted to go back,
to rewind time,
to undo the choices,
the moments
that led me here,
to this feeling,
this bitter taste in my mouth
that I couldn’t swallow down.
But time doesn’t work like that.
Regret doesn’t come with an eraser,
and the weight of my disappointment
was too heavy to carry.

I stood there for what felt like forever,
wondering how I had gotten here,
how I had become someone
I didn’t recognize it.
The mirror didn’t lie.
It showed me the truth—
the truth of my weakness,
my failure,
and it burned.

I thought about all the times
I had told myself
I was better than this,
stronger than this,
that I would never let myself
become the thing I feared.
But there I was,
standing in the wreckage
of my own making,
and there was no one to pull me out.

I had to face it,
the version of myself
I never wanted to see it,
the version that wasn’t enough,
that had fallen short,
that had broken her own heart.
And in that moment,
I learned something
I never wanted to know—
that I could disappoint myself,
that I could fail,
and that I would have to live with it.

The first time
I was disappointed in myself
was the moment
I realized I wasn’t perfect,
that I wasn’t unbreakable,
that I wasn’t the person
I had imagined in my head.
And that truth—
that ugly, bitter truth—
was a weight
I wasn’t ready to carry.

But now,
I have no choice.

I stand at the edge of myself,
looking down into the cracks,
the fissures that split open years ago,
quietly, unnoticed at first.
Now, they gape wide,
jagged mouths swallowing my thoughts,
my dreams,
leaving only the sharpness
of the pieces I broke into.

I am divided,
two shadows wrestling in the dark,
each one pulling me apart
with hands, I don’t recognize.
My voice trembles,
caught between the shouts and whispers,
straining to rise above the noise
that lives inside my head,
but it is buried,
buried beneath layers of doubt
I built walls
around my own heart.

Who am I?
I ask,
but the answer changes each time,
like a reflection in water,
rippling, distorting,
never staying still long enough
for me to see clearly.
I stare,
but the surface shifts,
and I lose myself again.

I used to be whole,
didn’t I?
Once,
I knew the rhythm of my heartbeat,
the steady thrum that kept time
with the pace of my breath,
in and out,
in sync with the world around me.
But somewhere,
somehow,
I lost the beat,
lost the sense of who I was,
lost the path I was meant to follow.

Now, I am a tangle of contradictions,
a mess of tangled thoughts
and twisted desires,
pulling in opposite directions.
One part of me wants to stay,
to hold onto the familiar weight
of the chains, I forged myself.
The other part—
the one that trembles like a bird
against the bars of its cage—
wants to break free,
wants to soar,
wants to escape the prison
I made it out of my skin.

I wrestle with myself,
each breath a battle,
each step is a struggle
to move forward
while the past clings to my heels,
dragging me back into the pit
I’ve climbed out of
so many times before.
But I am tired of falling.
I am tired of sinking into the dark
only to claw my way back up again,
fingers bloodied,
heart bruised.

So I stop.
I stop fighting.
I stop running.
I turn and face the shadows,
the voices that have haunted me,
the fears that have whispered
in the dead of night,
telling me I’m not enough,
that I’ll never be enough.

I let them scream.
I let them tear at my mind,
let them rip open the scars
that never healed.
I let the pain wash over me,
drown me,
until there is nothing left
but silence.

And in that silence,
I find the quiet truth
I’ve been searching for.
The truth that has been buried
beneath the noise of my mind.
I am not broken.
I am not lost.

I am becoming.

Each crack,
each scar,
each tear
is not a wound,
but a doorway.
A doorway into something new,
something whole.

The pieces of me
that I thought were shattered
are not pieces at all.
They are fragments of a mosaic,
a puzzle that has no edge,
no defined shape,
because I am still forming,
still growing,
still learning who I am.

I breathe.
For the first time in years,
I breathe,
and it fills me,
fills the empty spaces inside me
that I thought were hollow,
but were only waiting.

I open my eyes,
and I see myself,
not as broken,
not as divided,
but as a whole,
as complete,
even in my imperfections.

I step forward,
not away from the shadows,
but through them,
into the light
that waits on the other side.
And I realize,
I have always been the light,
always been the one holding the key
to the cage I built.

I am free now.
Not because I have won the fight,
but because I have ended it.

I am whole.

The night folds in around me,
like the hem of a curtain,
gathering darkness,
clinging to the edges of the room.
I feel your absence thick in the air,
heavier than the silence
that fills the space you once breathed in.

Your touch lingers—
not in the warmth of your hand
but in the cold, where it used to rest,
a hollow in my chest,
an echo of fingers tracing skin
now left to fade,
like dust in a forgotten corner.
Love shouldn’t feel like this,
but it does.

The clock ticks louder than it ever did before,
each second a nail is driven deeper
into the wall between us.
Time was never a friend to lovers,
but it was a stranger
until you left.
Now, it stalks me,
its shadow curling long across the floor,
reminding me how little of it we shared,
How much of it would I spend without you?

I imagine you beneath a sky that isn’t mine,
stars hanging like unfamiliar punctuation
in a story, we never finished.
Do you look at them the same way,
as if they could speak for us,
bridge the chasm
Do we keep falling into it?
I’d ask,
but words feel thin,
too brittle to survive the miles between us.

Distance is a thief,
stealing not just moments,
but pieces of us.
I try to remember the sound of your voice,
how it curled around my name,
soft, deliberate,
like a promise you didn’t need to keep,
because we believed in it forever.
But forever has edges now,
sharp, jagged,
tearing at the seams of what we once were.

I can almost feel you still,
the phantom press of your lips
against my neck,
whispered confessions
that used to make the world smaller,
closer.
Now, all I have are shadows of your breath,
cold where it was once warm,
faint where it was once inevitable.

The nights stretch on like roads,
endless, winding,
with no signs to tell me how far
until I find you again.
And I wonder if you’ll still be the same,
if I’ll still recognize the way
your hands trace the lines of my body
like you’re reading a map
you’ve traveled a thousand times before.
Or if we’ll be strangers,
relearning the language of each other’s skin,
stumbling over vowels and consonants
we used to speak fluently.

Love wasn’t supposed to be this quiet,
but here we are,
sitting in the stillness,
waiting for the noise of reunion,
for the rush of your heartbeat
against mine,
for the friction of two lives
that used to fit like puzzle pieces,
now scattered,
edges worn,
trying to find their way back together.

Sometimes I dream of you,
but in the dreams,
your face is blurred,
like a painting left too long in the rain,
colors bleeding together,
soft and shapeless.
I reach out,
but my fingers pass through you,
and I wake with the taste of your name
on my lips,
but it’s not enough.
It’s never enough.

I press my hand against the window,
cold glass,
a poor substitute for your skin,
but I close my eyes
and pretend it’s you,
pretend the miles don’t stretch on forever,
pretend that love can bridge this distance.
Because love,
despite everything,
is the one thing
I still believe in it.

I hold on to that belief,
clutch it tight
as if it could keep me warm
in this empty bed.
I hold on to it
because I have nothing else.
And I hope,
hope that love will bring you back to me,
hope that one day
we’ll stand face to face again,
and the world will fold itself into our arms,
small and quiet,
the way it used to be
before the distance,
before the silence,
before the longing
became louder than the love.

But until then,
I wait.

We met in corners, in shadows, in the breath
of a lie whispered close. I watched your hands,
mapped the veins like blue rivers that pulsed life
through borrowed moments, knowing each touch
was a secret stitched in the flesh. You wore your ring
like armor; I wore my need like a wound,
open and bleeding every time you spoke.

I told myself it was love—that tangled heat,
a slow burn under the skin, the ache of you
pressed against me, filling the hollow places
I’d carved out quiet rooms in beds that weren’t mine.
We never called it wrong, not out loud.
We called it us. We called it fire.
You called when she wasn’t home,
when the house was too quiet
and the guilt wasn’t loud enough
to drown out the wanting.

At first, it was hunger.
Animal, primal, raw—
you against the wall,
I, with my breath, hitched,
teeth grazing your collarbone,
the bitter taste of your name
still hot on my tongue.
We made a religion of it,
sinned like saints in the backseat,
churches of parking lots and dim hotel rooms.
You’d touch my hair, my throat, my ribs,
your fingers spelling secrets I tried to forget
but wore bruises in hidden places.
We were beautiful in our recklessness,
untouched by consequence,
floating above what we knew would sink us.

But love is a slow rot,
a quiet poison we drank willingly,
thinking the burn was just passion,
not the start of an ending.
Your promises were smoke,
curling around my lungs,
suffocating but sweet.
I breathed them in any way,
eyes closed, dreaming of a version
where we were free and accurate,
not just borrowed, not just stolen.

You said you’d leave her.
Once, twice, a hundred times—
like a prayer you never meant.
I waited in rooms with no clocks,
fingers tracing the cold glass
of half-empty wine bottles,
your texts are like breadcrumbs
leading nowhere but back to you.
We were an open wound—infected,
oozing the lies we told ourselves
when the lights were off.
Every kiss felt like both a promise
and a goodbye.

There were days when I hated you,
when the phone didn’t ring,
when your silence was louder
than any touch you’d ever given.
I’d spit your name like venom,
write your absence on bathroom mirrors
and lipstick-smeared napkins.
I made myself small,
trapped in the corners of your life
where she couldn’t see,
where no one ever looked close enough
to catch us slipping.
And still, I stayed.
Love’s fool, love’s martyr,
pinned beneath the weight of you.

Now, our meetings are darker,
the light between us thinning
It’s like a thread about to break.
I trace the curve of your jaw
with fingers gone cold,
your touch now a chain,
a rope I once mistook for a lifeline.
You still say you love me,
but the words feel brittle,
like old flowers pressed in books,
fading to nothing but memory.
You still hold me close,
but I’ve learned the shape of distance
in the crook of your arm.

I don’t know what we are anymore,
two ghosts haunting the same lie,
too afraid to leave, too tired to stay.
We keep pretending the fire’s still warm,
that we aren’t burning,
that we can’t feel the smoke.
But we are ashes now,
scattered and lost,
drifting on a wind we can’t control,
knowing every touch is just another step
toward the inevitable end.

I loved you.
I hate you.
I still need you,
but we’re nothing more than a beautiful disaster,
a slow-motion car crash,
a love that’s more wound than wonder.
This is how we fall apart—
with every stolen kiss,
every desperate lie,
every moment we pretend
we’re anything but broken.

In the mirrored halls of our shared past,
your face is an old photograph,
framed in the corner of my mind,
where dust settles on the glass of memory.

Our home is a museum of echoes,
where every room whispers your name
in a language I no longer understand,
Each corner was a relic of a time when we knew how to speak.

Your touch, once a map of hidden trails
on the landscape of my skin,
has become a compass spinning aimlessly,
seeking a north that no longer exists.

The moments we once sculpted with care
are now statues in a gallery of distance,
each touch is an artful attempt
to breathe life into figures frozen in marble.

We navigate a sea of everyday gestures,
each one a wave crashing into a shore
where intimacy has washed away,
leaving only the driftwood of habitual touch.

Your voice is a distant thunder,
rumbling through the storm clouds of routine,
its resonance barely reaching
the shores of my listening ears.

I remember when our conversations
were fireworks in the night sky,
each word a spark that lit up
the dark spaces between us.

Now, they are fireflies caught in a jar,
their glow a faint flicker in the twilight,
struggling to escape the confines
of a shared silence that has become our cage.

Our love, once a blazing forge,
now feels like an old lantern,
its flame struggling to catch
on the wick of our shared experiences.

I reach for your hand,
but it feels like grabbing at the mist
that rises from the morning dew,
a ghostly touch that slips through my fingers.

The echoes of our laughter
are like distant bells tolling in an abandoned church,
their sound hollow and meaningless,
a requiem for the intimacy we’ve lost.

Our intimacy is a puzzle missing pieces,
each fragment is a reminder of how the image
we once fit together has become
a jumble of shapes that no longer align.

In the quiet of our shared space,
I find myself a wanderer,
tracing the outlines of old maps
that no longer guide me to where we used to be.

We are two dancers in a room
where the music has stopped,
our movements out of sync,
Each step is a miscalculation in a choreography of disconnection.

The room we share is a canvas
where the colors of our love have run,
creating streaks of indifference
that mar the once vibrant picture of us.

I look at you and see a familiar face
that now feels like a painting
hung in a gallery I no longer visit,
a piece I recognize but don’t quite understand.

We are actors in a play with missing lines,
each performance is a rehearsal
for a script that has faded from our grasp,
leaving us to improvise in the ruins of our past.

Our touches are the final scenes of a film
where the plot has dissolved into fragments,
each frame is a reminder of the story
that we can no longer follow.

In the end, we are two characters
in a novel with pages turned too quickly,
the ink of our shared narrative
blurring into the fog of what was once our story.

Here we are,
familiar faces with foreign touches,
wandering through the remnants
of a love that has become its ghost.

You sit there, a quiet monument to my habits—
tiny tombstones of meals half-forgotten.
Breadcrumbs in the keyboard.
A graveyard of snacks and quick bites,
the silent evidence of late-night hunger,
of mornings too rushed for plates,
of days when the laptop was a dining table.
No one tells you how crumbs become fossils,
buried beneath letters, between spaces meant for words,
but here they are.
A constellation of crumbs,
mapping the history of every sandwich,
every muffin devoured between deadlines.

Look closer.
That isn’t just a crumb—it’s a memory.
A fragment of the toast I ate while
halfheartedly responding to an email,
a relic from that bag of chips that kept me going
through endless revisions.
Like a diary written in crumbs,
the kind no one will ever read,
but there it is—
my story, one flake at a time,
caught between Q and W,
buried under the space bar.

It’s funny, isn’t it?
The way we scatter pieces of ourselves,
leaving traces of what sustained us,
or what distracted us,
or what we devoured in silence
while pretending to be productive.
The crumbs know the truth.
They always do.
They sit there, lodged in tiny crevices,
mocking me for multitasking,
for turning my keyboard into a feeding trough,
for thinking I could type and chew and live
all at once.
The crumbs see through the performance.
They linger long after the task is done,
mocking my efficiency,
their jagged edges, a reminder of the mess I made.

But isn’t that life?
A mess hidden beneath the surface,
ignored until the keyboard starts to stick
until the letters get clogged with the weight of neglect?
It’s never just the crumbs.
It’s what they represent.
The lazy afternoons when I should’ve gone for a walk
but instead opted for chips and a screen.
The nights when I worked through dinner,
picking at whatever was nearby,
pretending that food didn’t matter as much as finishing.
Each crumb is a small failure.
Each crumb a confession.

But maybe I’m being too hard on myself.
Maybe the crumbs aren’t failures at all.
Maybe they’re proof of survival.
I ate, didn’t I?
I sustained myself through the haze of work,
through the endless demands,
through the pressures to produce, produce, produce.
These breadcrumbs are the trail I left behind,
like Hansel and Gretel,
guiding me back to a time when I was so busy
I couldn’t even stop to wipe my hands.

And who’s to say that’s wrong?
Who’s to say there isn’t a certain beauty
in the crumbs that gather
in the spaces we ignore until we can’t?
There’s life in the debris.
There’s meaning in the mess.
These breadcrumbs tell a story of days survived,
of hours spent chasing something bigger,
even if that something was just another task,
another email, another line of code.

So, let the crumbs stay.
Let them nestle into the keys,
an unnoticed archaeology of the mundane,
a quiet rebellion against the idea that
everything needs to be clean, polished, and perfect.
I’ll vacuum them out eventually,
but for now, they can rest there—
small witnesses to the fact that I was here,
that I worked,
that I ate,
that I lived,
even if it was just in crumbs.