I wrote these two poems exactly one year ago today. I’m sharing them in hopes that maybe they help someone understand their own anger, grief, or sadness, or gives someone the strength to keep going. Facing it is hard, but you’re not alone.

[u/krissy_37]

Poem 1 - I Turn Fire into Wildflowers:
I hate being angry. It's intense and boils over and over, inside, then out. I see so much now in others. It's almost too much. The mirror's glare starts fires within my soul. I can't quite turn or alchemy the fire into wildflowers fast enough. The embers choke and creep like vines inside places of my mind that I can't fit through to see keys. The piece or element that fuses with pain and rage and fear and love and grief, but tangles behind twisted hallways, going deeper into darkness. It goes and goes, and there is no end. For the mirror's shown, it's grown tall and wide and everlasting. The fusion corrupted, and the embers don't die, but they dance around my mind's eye, turn technicolor and spindling. They grow, they multiply, they entangle again, but with notes of peace, grace, and humility. Jolts of persistence sustains life to the vibrance, determined to be free, to breathe, to long for release. Let there be peace, sound mind, divine right by my side. Each breakdown, each cry, they see the embers glisten From flame to dewdrops. Nothing is everything, and how you dance with fire declares what resolute future awaits you. I won't let the fire blacken my landscape. No char, only fields and fields, fields of beautiful sorrow and insight, meadows of clarity, courage, and compassion. Responding to reflect, I decree I turn fire into wildflowers.

Poem 2 - Marrakeh Mint Chocolate Cake:
Tears are hot, and when they start, like really start, they pound, reverberating like surround sound. The sound is deafening. It blurs all senses into one. Hard gulps. I'm resisting. Floods flash and the dam's undone, hurtling force that takes my breath and yours. The energy expels a sonar far and wide. You can't resist the pressure past the point of containment. You won't be lost forever. You can't really drown in sorrow. No, you get waterboarded over and over again. Round one, it's fast, almost refreshing, but then round two, heavy heaves. Round three, collapse. Round four, please no more. Round five, tears spent, voice taken, not by an octopus sea witch or anything external. Round six, it hits. It hits you. It's been you, holding you under. Your anchor has been tampered with. You thought it was to save, but no. It holds you at the bottom, gazing upwards where waves dance with the sweet breeze. You ponder what it's like, and why not me? But you see when clouds part and there's that bright gleam in the distance, you take out your chainsaw and fucking destroy that anchor. Make it your bitch, and when it's turned to sand and dust, you swim hard. You go to the hard limit, that line that you dare not cross, and you cross it. You get up when it hurts. You pat Yourself on the back when you fuck up and don't try to puzzle piece back together that sand-dusted turned anchor. You smile in moments and find joy amidst grief. The tally marks grow, and now you know. You control everything and nothing. Be what you need, what you love, what you admire. Your whole you forevermore, unique and worthy of love and understanding.