I wake at the bottom.
I’m drowning, though I rise.
I’m clawing to the surface, though
I don’t want to survive.
It’s not because the surface keeps moving far away
Or that I’m too tired to fight the current’s sway.
I claw from muscle memory,
from stronger, hopeful days
when the sun, within my reach
said death was not today.
When its shine was strong enough to warm the shallow blues.
I claw through all these memories
knowing I will lose.
They shred apart to pieces as my heart bursts in my chest.
Anchoring to the bottom
my body, now lifeless.
About the Creator
Cassandra Warren
Mom, USAF veteran, Lupus survivor, and aspiring writer. Take a stroll inside my mind.
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A Little Bit Of God
January 2026 I thought I’d spend the night in neon lights on grainy film but my brother is telling me how an eternity of hell is caused by prevalent peace, and who am I to disrupt such a thing? So I found myself in the same skin with the same sights, wondering whether or not I am one of those– do I feel peace? Do I expect more when it is gone? It being everything. We’re running out of time but the car is belching up something strange and we’ve got God in between our eyes nodding along to every apology and plea spoken for our friends and loved ones– they don’t know any better, they’ll come around eventually. He’s telling me about barbed wire guides around lives and ties and wives and lies and, look, the snow is starting to fall so I guess we better hang up soon. But it’s been too long. We’re building fields of skills and realms of distrust and these moments are only seen now, can no longer be read as words, only swept with eyes upon oil pastels or smudged charcoal. It’s a painting of an evening, like Daniel’s soles in Edgar Degas’ mind, but if anything is just it’s the lack of unrest in skin like His and lives like this– okay, so maybe five hours on the phone is a lot if you have a job and you’re trying to cook dinner, but only one of us falls into that gorge and only one of us believes in what lies beneath it. My brother tells me things that sit in my spirit like half an ounce of prospect and a squeeze of bourn, how he tells God to let me in: despite my sins, despite all the moons in between these calls, despite the burning in both of our throats. I do feel peace here. I also feel that my peace is a subpar window job, a pinky’s strength avoiding blizzards inside the bedsheets. I’d like to spend more nights like this, with contrasting disaster living between a speakerphone, and God finding some space in between.
By Olivia Dodgeabout 23 hours ago in Poets
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