Guest Blogs

I walk the forest of us, each tree bowed with memory,
Its roots tangled deep in the soil of promise, trembling with history.
Beneath the canopy of our love, the ember rests,
Red against shadow, small and patient, alive in the hollow of my chest.

He says it is cold, that the flame sleeps at last,
Yet smoke curls like a whisper from the path he has passed.
I feel it in the quiet, the space between breath,
A glow I cannot touch, a ghost I cannot bless.

I do not step closer, do not reach with my hands,
For to interfere would be cruelty the forest demands.
So I tread softly where the ferns bends and sigh,
Watching the ember flicker beneath the indifferent sky.

The wind dances through the branches, carrying voices of old,
And I know the ember remembers all it was told.
Every spark is a promise, a temptation, a pain,
A fire lying patient, a threat to all we have lain.

I hum a low lullaby, a song in the dark,
To quiet the glow, to steady the spark.
But the forest is patient, and the ember is sly,
And I know that a flame can awaken and fly

I am neither villain nor guard, only witness and wood,
Only a heart that has loved and wishes it could.
I cannot command the wind, cannot still the rain,
Cannot stop what is sleeping from stirring again.

For our love is a forest, wild, beautiful, untamed,
And fire, even forgotten, may kindle unnamed.
So I hum to the dark to the wind, to the leaves,
And learn how to live with I cannot unweave.

I confess.

I stayed when I shouldn’t have, and I know that now. I told myself I was helping. Told myself it was kinder to remain, to keep the light on, the door open. But that was a lie. I stayed because leaving felt like killing something with my own hands, and the responsibility of that was too much to bear.

So, I lingered. Learned how to sound gentle. Learned how to promise without promising anything at all. Maybe that was worse than anything Acceptance ever did.
I whispered maybe too many times, and they believed me. Is that really my fault? Can I be blamed for blinding someone from the obvious?
After all I didn’t force them to listen. I didn’t hold their face and make them look at me, I only stayed where I’d always been. I only did what I’ve always done. But I knew. Yes, I confess. I knew.

I felt the truth pressing against me every time I said not yet, every time I softened the edges so it wouldn’t cut so badly. I felt the weight every time they leaned on me; of the moment I should’ve let go. Still, I didn’t.
I didn’t let go because letting go was final. Because once I stepped aside, there would be nothing left to stand between them and the truth. Between them and destruction. I was holding them together. I believed that. I truly did. But the longer I linger, the more I felt them bending around me, shaping themselves smaller, quieter, so they could keep believing.

I confess I taught them how to wait. How to endure. How to call stillness strength. Is that such a bad thing? To teach someone how to survive? To give them something to hold when everything else was slipping? I tell myself that waiting is not the worst fate. Endurance is noble. There are worse things than standing still. But even now, I can feel how thin those words have become.

Sometimes I felt Acceptance arrive beside me. Silent. Watching. Not cruel, just finished. I hated it for that. I hated how calm it was, how easily it could close the door and walk away. I didn’t care, or at least I convinced myself that. Acceptance was cold. Bitter. Painful. But I think now that maybe it was just honest.

After some time, I stopped staying for the right reasons. I stayed because honesty would make me responsible. Because if I left, the waiting would have ended, and the ending would’ve been real. I was afraid of the moment they would stop looking for me, of the quiet that would follow once I was no longer needed.
I was afraid of leaving them with nothing, and more so of seeing that they could survive without me.
I confess I stayed, and I broke them anyway.

I came together in the cold. The press of small hands shaping me to life, rounding, lifting, setting me upright against the day. The ground held firm under my weight as the sky grew pale and wide above me, light spreading across my skin with a cool warmth that enriched the core of my being.

Snow fell around me, soft and patient, filling the quiet spaces, nestling into my shoulders and arms, clinging gently as if it knew me. More arrived in careful drifts, the air busy with white, the world hushed and bright all at once. Somewhere close, bells chimed faintly, carried on the breeze with lazy charm.

A scarf wrapped around my middle, wool warmed with borrowed heat, smelling of cupboards, laughter and something sweet baking nearby. A hat followed, place with ceremonious laughter that sparked a smile in the coal of my eyes. Suddenly, the world had edges and colour. Snowbanks rose like small hills, cut by the prints of childish feet. Mittens smoothed me proudly, as cherubic faces of pink giggled with unburdened glee.

They ran in wide circles, boots crunching, scarves trailing behind them like bright ribbons. Snowballs whipped through the air, bursting into powder before they ever thought to land. Breath bloomed in pale clouds and vanished just as quickly, laughter lingering longer than the sound itself, as if the air itself wanted to keep it there.

The yard felt endless then, wrapped in white and wonder. Windows glowed softly from the house, spilling squares of gold onto the snow. Each time the door opened, warmth rushed out to meet the cold, carrying music and voices and the promise of hands held close inside. It all drifted together, sound, light, motion, settling into the evening like something meant to be kept. Time moved gently. It wandered rather than passed. I stood where they left me, finished and certain, watching the day stretch and fold in on itself.

When the sky deepened to blue and stars blinked awake, the children slowed. They paused to look at me once more, patting my sides, adjusting my scarf, laughing softly as if afraid to wake the night. Then they went inside, leaving the yard glowing and quiet.

I remained, wrapped in winter and light, holding the day exactly as it was, whole, warm, and bright with the simple magic of Christmas.

Every choice casts a second shadow,
A quiet twin that drifts the other way.
Walking backwards through imagined hours,
Along an unlit, unwritten day.
While one world grows wild with possibility,
Feral with colour, breath and sound,
The other sinks beneath the surface,
Like a forest swallowed, root and crown.

Every step that finds its way
Through maps of dust and open air,
Erases gardens never planted,
And constellations that were never there.
Silent roots beneath each choice,
Tangle through the darkened ground,
Drinking from forgotten rivers,
Where invisible costs are found.

For every door that opens wide,
With brass-lit hinges, warm and bright,
Another settles into stillness,
Leaning to live without the light.
No moment ever stands alone,
No answer comes without its weight,
For time collects all maybes, too,
In archives never set by fate.

My grandad is a mountain, steady, strong and true,
A man who never falters in the hardest things he’ll do.
He walks with quiet purpose, with courage in his stride,
A strength that never wavers and a heart he’ll never hide.

My grandad builds up worlds with skill that never ends,
He shapes the rough into something fine, the kind which life depends.
He turns bare boards into beauty, makes the broken good as new,T
here’s nothing he can’t fix when he sets his mind ‘to do’.

My grandad gives so freely, never asking for reward,
He’s first to lend a helping hand, the steady, quiet sort.
He puts others before himself in everything he does,
A man whose honest, open heart defines the best of us.

My grandad never grumblers at the tough cards life has thrown,
He shoulders ever burden with a courage all his own.
He rises to each challenge with a calm unshaken grace,
A quiet sort of bravery time can never erase.

My grandad leaves a legacy I learn from every day,
In the things he shows with actions and the quiet words he’ll say.
And while he’s here beside me, I carry this with pride:
My grandad is the strongest man, with love that doesn’t hide.

There is an orchard that no one owns,
Where stories echo as trees grow old.
The wind hums a choir through hollowed stones,
Of youth once bright, now turning cold.

But first it starts with bright green leaves,
Fattened fruit, and healthy seeds.
A gentle lie the summer weaves,
Before frost comes with silver weeds.

It picks the petals off the rose,
To see the brittle secrets shown.
It walks the path no mercy knows,
To hear the shape of undertone.

The orchard shifts, the soil dries,
The apples bruise, the peaches sour.
The honey sags beneath the flies,
And the sweetness wilts by the hour.

The birds circle and take what shimmers,
Never mourning the branches stripped.
Their gentle claws are practiced trimmers,
With nectar coating each bit they’ve dipped.

The shadows stretch along the rows,
Where whispered time dissolves the air.
A hollow murmur only grows,
And leaves a taste of something rare.

You stand witness to every season,
Collecting ripeness with the rot.
Too young to name the creeping treason,
Too old to claim you feel it not.

The orchard never speaks its warning,
It simply is, and was, and will,
A blooming elegy by the morning,
A song of loss the twilights fill. 

And so…

The wind will tell you, if you stay,
Of all the things that fade and fray.
For time will take, and leave, and sever,
And nothing waits for you forever.

I once felt Death through the trembling glass of memory, when laughter lingered in rooms now cold,
And though His touch was cloaked in unholy grace, I turned away, refusing the omen,
For he was not meant to claim me yet,
A spectre stalking others, a burden I believed not mine to bear.

I buried His presence in silence, as one buries the dread they cannot name,
Deep beneath the weight of unuttered fears, beneath the pride that scorned my fragility,
And the cruel mercy of time, which does not heal,
But merely dulls the terror just long enough for it to rise anew

Years dragged by, a slow decay of days and shadows, where I swore He would not follow,
Where I laboured to strip Him from pulse and thought,
To let seasons gnaw away His chill until even memory forgot His tread.

Yet He returned.

Even in laughter’s brightest hour, when sunlight dared rest upon my skin,
He lingered just beyond notice,
A breath too cold, a shadow unaccounted for, a gente pressure upon my soul,
Reminding it that bliss is borrowed.

In crowded rooms, He stands unseen behind me,
A silent guest whom only I perceive,
A presence threading through every heartbeat with the patience of centuries.

Happiness becomes a fragile truce,
For His voice, velvet and relentless, whispers that nothing gold ever survives His gaze for long.

He calls to me not with terror, but temptation,
An invitation wrapped in rest.
Why struggle? Why fear the quiet that waits for all?

I feel him always: a breath along my neck, mid-laughter, mid-dream,
Reminding me that joy too has a pulse that will one day still.
He watches the rise and fall of my chest with a collector’s patience,
Counting each moment I steal from eternity.
His hymn sings beneath each heartbeat, a dark lullaby,
Sweet as surrender, sure as nightfall.

But he shall not rush me, shall not force my hand.
For Death is a gentleman who knows I will come for him,
In time.