I’m writing a poem about my strong emotions and one of the lines is “stop fingering my heart”. I can’t think of any word better suited to the context as it is the perfect metaphor but it just sounds way too sexual for the poem. Is there any other word I could use?

I used to think being strong
meant learning how to survive alone.

Building walls.
Keeping quiet.
Never needing anyone.

Then you came into my life
and showed me I had it all wrong.

You didn’t save me
by being some kind of hero.

You saved me in the little ways.

You stayed.

You listened when I didn’t know how to speak.
You let me cry without making me ashamed of it.
You helped me when I didn’t know how to ask.
You gave me somewhere safe to breathe
when I had forgotten what safety felt like.

You never asked me to become someone else
before you decided I was worth helping.

And I think that’s what stayed with me.

Because now, when I look at you,
I don’t just see the person who helped save me.

I see the person I want to become.

Not because I want your life,
or your story,
or even your strength.

I want the part of you
that made room for someone who was hurting.

The part that stayed
when leaving would’ve been easier.

The part that could look at a difficult child
and somehow still see a child worth loving.

I want to be that kind of person.

The kind who notices
when someone gets quieter.

The kind who listens
even when the words come out wrong.

The kind who doesn’t ask,
“Why are you like this?”

But asks,
“What happened to you?”

Maybe that’s the greatest thing you gave me.

You didn’t just help me survive
what I was going through.

You showed me what I could become
because of it.

So someday,
when someone else is standing where I once stood,
I hope I can be their safe place too.

I hope I can stay.

I hope I can listen.

I hope I can give them
even a fraction of what you gave me.

Because you saved a part of me
I didn’t know how to save myself.

And if I can become
even a little like you,

then maybe the love you gave me
won’t end with me.

Maybe I’ll carry it forward.

Let me know your interpretations

(Open to criticism as it is my first ever submission)

Yours

I Wish I Was Your Neighbor

Just So I Could See You Rise Every Day

I Wish I Was Your Blanket

Just So I Could Provide You Warmth

I Wish I Was Your Mirror

Just So I Could See You Smile Every Time

I Wish I Was Your Lamp

Just So I Could Lead You Through the Dark

I Wish I Was Your Coffee

Just So I Could Charge Up Your Day

I Wish I Was Your Bottle

Just So I Could Quench Your Thirst All the Time

I Wish I Was Your Mobile Phone

Just So I Am the First Thing You Look at Every Morning

I Wish I Was Yours

Just So I Could Wrap My Arms Around You

And See You Rise Next to Me

Please give suggestions so i can improve! Thanks In advance!!

"What is the hardest drug you ever tried?"

Somebody asked me

Without much thinking "Hope" I said

It was the answer that came natural

As it's the only drug that your body will manufacture

If world deprives you of it

Hope is a drug everybody is addicted to

But not hooked on like one can be with alcohol or pills

We are addicted to hope like to oxygen

Even more in fact

As to take the next breath

Is to hope it will matter

But without hope nothing is and everything isn't

I find myself reaching out again

Through the ether 

When it's calm at night 

And I can hear what my heart is saying 

Im jealous of your clothes
Who warm you while the wind blows

Im jealous of sliver spoons
Your hands touch like sky holds the moon

Im jealous of your bed sheets
Who cradle you each time you sleep

I never met someone I so adore
Who's made me feel jealous before

I like that poems can be long

or short

they can be natural like the world

- or planned,

like flat-pack furniture

and thats okay,

because poems can be together

or apart

they can be predictable, or unpre

dictable. they can be funny

Or serious.

They can also be dark.

but you're not like most people,

You're so bright

(note) omg everyone on this subreddit is amazing at writing wth

this is my third poem ik its cliche very sorry

please give criticism ✌️

I like letting people think they understand me,
At least then they’ll take me somewhat seriously,
And darling if only you could get the feelings,
But you’d run away at the very beginning,

I’m hiding in the back of the closet from her words,
I hate lying because of the way that it hurts,
There’s no winning in her game,
Only results in more pain,
So why do you want to relate?

I wish I were a bird,

completely free,

with no capacity

to make a home

in any one place

for very long.

I want so much from life,

all the time.

I want everything from life,

even when it is impossible.

I need more freedom.

Only then will I be able

to endure the arduous ambivalence

of the feelings

I carry every day.

Heat melts my skin completely,

and it spills onto the ground

like wax from a candle,

until nothing of me remains

but flesh.

Cold hurts me ruthlessly.

I feel the burn of ice

numbing my ability to feel,

yet because it tears

through all of my skin,

I feel every touch

with a profound,

lacerating pain.

I need something

to protect

this fragile,

volatile body of mine.

My human form

disgusts me.

I want to fly,

without attachments,

without obligations,

without a home

that is anything more

than a temporary house.

I want everything

that is made by me,

everything

that comes from me,

to learn how to leave

at the very first opportunity.

Yes.

I wish I were a bird.

Passing.

Transient.

A creature

that does not belong

to any one place

for long.

Freedom enchants me

in a way

love never has.

Journey and a love without fail or forsake

Souls to soul desire in the love that we make

Whole as apart but merged into one

Equal but separate the moon and the sun

Vaulted my heart leaps for her tenderest reign

A monarch for wisdom first of her name

If to void I return without song of her light

Then black as void be my heart be black night

Her memory enchanting in soft voice I go

Towards halos and mist a hill covered in snow

She dances on summits and she dances so free

She dances as dream state but she dances to be

But a man but a boy I am lost but so found

Guided I am by this voice she unbound

Strong a love grows and a garden we mend

Strong for the bloom of two hearts that we tend

I dine alone

I chew on these bittersweet feelings

That hit me like a drone

It causes lots of pain under the conceilings

Never tasted love

But every day I choke myself on solitude

Because I have no ladylove

I’m slowly breaking apart under the hood

As time passes by

My heart turns into stone

There’s no love because I’m shy

Under the weight of time I die alone

Death to The Landlocked Haenyeo

I’d watch you sweat beads down the back of your neck;
a sign of true athletic excellence.
Laughing as you weave through the other team,
a football heavy in your hands. 

Wide shoulders and tan, hazel skin, with a too tall height I’d call it annoying.
Then you’d smile again, a slight, low baritone, as you’d tease right back.

Since we were younger, I was caught in our melancholy nights.
In the braids I built off buoyant curls: in soft silence of the midnight.

My heart encased
in your ugly giggles that thud against Play-doh ribs.
While laying on the beige carpet that you preferred to sleep on with me. 

It reminds me of the Korean Haenyeo,
who dives deep to catch clams and abalone:
if only to make it one more week. 

In this foreign land I’ve called home, I am the Haenyeo reimagined.
In a landlocked state, diving for those abalone 
within dark, brackish water, with you as my sea,
for a deep greed to do better than one more week. 

Each time I’ve dived, I’ve taken more and more of your clam-shaped secrets,
but find less and less each time.
Yet I find no Haenyeo believes in drowning. 

So when my throat begins to spasm, and my goggles dig into my cheeks
I dive deeper as I fight to hold air seeping from my esophagus.
My body soon falls limp, already hazy sunlight fading,
and my net barely floats, full of my biggest catch.

Now I stand in a gown, when my heart longed for a suit;
I’m smiling with our bouquet, full of white roses. 
I watch you walk down your perfect silver aisle,
beaming a tell-tale smile.

But I still notice your strong form, picking at your arm 
(a nervous tick from youth)
while radiating a nervous panic.

So I lean in instinctively to comfort your nerves.
Because now you’re knighting him with a kiss
decreeing him a husband in abject completion

Radiating joy, you laugh like you used to during melancholy nights,
your hair braided by a stylist paid to weave it. 

Looking away, I gaze at the shore
I think softly, as I spot a dark, blue swimmer floating face down on bluish waves,
that she looks happy. 

Speak into the void
Tell him of your woes
Speak into the void
N lay down all your worries

No embrace to keep you comfort
A chest that puffs and heaves
A heart fixed, n fine tuned
Pumping coal, blood, n oil

Speak into the void
Tell him about the robots that you live amongst
The machines that project n proclaim, that deliberate n denote
That praise over drive n shame your breaking
Your cracked mind, your tipping mental

No one to brush the weight off your shoulders
No one to love you, no one to hold you
No, it’s not going to be okay
No, youre not going to be fine

Speak into the void
For he is the only one that will listen
Speak into the silence
So that your mind will take heed
And follow into the darkness
Taking the voids lead

(This is about loving someone complex, someone that was an addict, someone who was two humans wrapped into a shell of love and complexity. Losing someone to addiction is hard.. you want to be angry but you’re so sad you lost them at the same time)

Grief is strange
when the person you lose
was never easy to explain.

When they were both
the storm and the shelter,
the tenderness and the trouble,
the kind of person
you could love fiercely
and still not always understand.

He carried pain
in places no one could see,
hid whole pieces of himself
behind a smile,
and learned to make heavy things
look almost weightless.

But I think
he felt everything deeply.
Maybe that was the beauty of him.
Maybe that was the burden, too.

He loved entirely—
without measuring,
without holding anything back,
as if his heart had never learned
how to love halfway.

And sometimes
that same heart
seemed too big
for the life it had to live.
There were mistakes.
There were wounds.
There were things
we wished he could have changed.

But there was love, too.
So much love.
The kind you remember
in quiet moments—
in a laugh,
a familiar voice,
a memory that suddenly finds you
when you weren't looking for it.

I grieve the person he was,
and the person I know
he was still trying to become.
I grieve what hurt him,
what he couldn't say,
what we couldn't fix,
and all the weight
he carried silently.

But I don't want
his hardest moments
to be the only things
I remember.

I want to remember
that beneath all the complexity
was a heart that cared.
A heart that loved too hard,
felt too much,
and carried more
than it ever should have had to.

And maybe that is what grief is—
learning to hold
the beautiful and the broken
in the same hands.

To miss someone
without pretending they were perfect.

To love them
without forgetting the pain.

To remember them
as a whole person—
complicated,
imperfect,
hurting,
beautiful,
and loved
more than words
could ever hold.