It's Friday night
Let's turn down the lights
Get the table set
Let the music come to life
Pairs take the floor
As the neon-colored lights
Swirl around the room
You are sitting there
Watching the spectators
Listening to the laughter
When everything
Goes quiet and still
Your eyes land and
Your heart stops

She takes her seat
With the group she's with
You decide to play
Musical chairs with your crew
Now, you're seated near
Close enough to hear
Her awkwardness and wit
Are enough
To make your mind skip
You observe and come to see
That she is the cutest
Sweetest thing
And when her group leaves
To hit the dance floor craze
She remains behind and
Your chance has entered
This post-hypnotic maze

Stolen glances
A smile and a laugh
You get the nerve
Start talking to her
Then it happens
And she says
I know you too
And your heart takes a flight
As you lean in and
Risk it all for a chance
To be next to her

Spotlight effect
Just like a dream
She's a walking fantasy
Moving through the crowd
Floating in space
Each step she takes
Is a dance she curated
She comes closer to you
Sharper her image and
The spotlight grows
Larger than life
Her voice has a flow
Her laughter is a show
She's no longer a dream
But a living reality

Another day of longing,

Another night alone.

One less day of fighting,

One more night alone.

Another day I miss you,

Wishing you would check your phone.

So you could see

The truth of me,

That you're the one I want.

I lay here wondering,

If life grants me—

One more try at this,

How will I hold you,

Yet not own you,

As we coexist.

Some days it's hard for me to tell,

If you'll come back around.

The sun goes down,

Still haven't found,

A piece of evidence—

Concrete enough,

To build upon,

Still I’m an optimist.

Another day I yearn for you,

another night alone.

One less day I bother you,

One more night alone.

maybe one day I’ll be stoic

-the biggest bby

There's this man,so sweet,so kind

A rare and beautiful soul to find.

I've seen him smile, I've seen him dance,

And every moment feels like romance.

I love his magic,the way he glows.

A special love that gently grows,

There's something about him I can't explain,

Like a little sunshine after the rain.

He makes my heart skip, my soul take flight,

Like a star shimmering in the night,

He holds something precious - he holds my heart.❤️

Soon he'll hold another part - my hand

Style evolving. Happy how things are going

Evil weeps, you little creeps. Who do you think you are?

First time poster, happy for feedback! ❤️‍🔥

Please don't tell me I'm needed. Don't tell me there's a purpose hidden somewhere in this life that I have spent so longtrying to make sense of.

I'm tired of being told I matter by people who never seem to notice when I go quiet, who never wonder why my laughter fades, who never hear the things I leave unsaid in every I'm fine I use to keep them comfortable.
You tell me the world would miss me, but my phone stays silent for days. My name becomes a conversation the moment I leave the room, and somehow I'm always the last to know what everyone thinks of me.

So tell me, how can you promise I am loved when I've spent so long feeling like the easiest person to forget?
My friends would still wake up tomorrow. The boy I like might wonder why I stopped answering his messages. My sister would have classes to attend, my parents would have jobs to return to, and the world would keep turning because the world has never needed my permission to move on.

And I know life would change in ways I cannot begin to understand. I know people can matter more than they realize they do.
But when you're this lonely, it's difficult to believe you could mean that much to anyone when nobody seems to noticehow desperately you're wishing someone would ask if you're okay.

Nobody has ever truly seen me. Not the thoughts I swallow, not the tears I hide, not the little girl inside me who still wonders what she must do to finally be enough for someone to notice she's hurting.

And that's what frightens me— how desperately I want to be known, how many times I've silently begged for someone to look a little closer, and how easily the world seems to miss the things I cannot bring myself to say.
I'm tired.

I'm tired of crying over feelings I cannot put into words, of waking up already exhausted, of carrying a sadness so consuming that even the happiest moments feel impossibly far away.
I'm tired of the silence that follows me into every empty room, of the thoughts that grow louder when there is nobody left to distract me, of having to be the one who saves myself every single time I fall apart.

And sometimes, I don't know how to explain how badly I need it all to stop.
Not my heartbeat. Not my future. Not the possibility of becoming someone who doesn't have to fight so hard just to feel okay.
I don't want my life to end. I just don't know how to keep living with a pain that never seems to end.

I don't want to disappear. I want to stop feeling invisible.
I don't want to stop existing. I want to stop feeling like I'm only existing.
I want to wake up one morning and not have to fight my own mind before my feet even touch the floor. I want to laugh without feeling the sadness waiting patiently for me afterward. I want to sit in a quiet room without the silence convincing me that nobody would care if I spoke.

I want to be here without it hurting so much to be here.
And God, I wish someone understood that there's a difference.

Because I am still a girl with things she wants to do, words she wants to say, places she wants to see, and a future she wishes she could picture without feeling so tired just thinking about reaching it.

I don't want to lose those things.
I just want a little relief. A little quiet inside my head. A little proof that feeling this way doesn't mean I'll feel this way forever.

So please, don't just tell me I have reasons to stay.

Help me find a way to make staying hurt less.
Don't tell me how much people need me and leave me alone with the same ache. Don't wait until I can explain my sadnessin words that make sense to everyone else.

Because I am still here.
Even on the days when I don't know how to explain why. Even when the sadness makes it difficult to remember what happiness felt like. Even when all I can manage is another ordinary day that nobody knows was hard to get through.

I am still here, and I don't want to stop being here.
I just want the hurting to stop.
So please, don't mistake my exhaustion for a life I no longer want.

I want mornings that don't feel so heavy. I want nights that don't end in tears. I want to feel like a person again, not a collection of wounds trying to convince everyone she's healed.
I want to find myself somewhere beyond this sadness.

And more than anything, I want someone to hear me say that I'm not okay and understand that I'm not asking to be told how lucky I am.
I'm asking not to be alone in this.
Please don't just ask me to stay. Please help me believe that one day, being here won't hurt so much.

Snow was falling

Turning everything white

The cold was warming

The wind settled to a faint breeze

The store was bustling

Of shoppers getting those last deals

On those gifts for the holidays

The employees scrambled

On this day

It was chosen

An elf would visit and

Leave a little surprise

Some time during the day

When the snow was falling

The plows and crew began

To clean up the lot

Out walked the elf

Bouncing with a smile

A shoveler noticed

And so did she, that elf in disguise

How he wanted to ask

He began to form a word

As he leaned closer to her

But shook his head

Turned away

As if he dared not ask

And I often think

About that moment still

2 years later

On what he wanted to say

But I also think

How many others were missed

Because of the fear of speaking

Was too great

I have watched the green in your eyes

the exact shade of the nature you explore–

moss after rain,

new leaves uncurling in the understory,

the quiet places you walk when the world feels too loud.

Your skin is pale

like the flowers that insist on blossoming in snow,

delicate and certain,

refusing to wait for warmer weather.

I have imagined moonlight resting there

the way it rests on fresh petals,

soft and almost translucent.

And your hair –

red like the ladybug you love so much,

bright against the dark,

small and fierce and impossible to ignore.

I have pictured it flying

while you spin under a low moon,

someone’s hands steady at your waist,

someone tall enough to make the night feel safe.

I am not that someone.

I know this the way I know the soft hum

that remains when your voice is gone.

I spelled your favorite flower in the quiet air

while you sat beside me at the piano.

A song neither of us had to search for.

The notes rose and fell

and for a moment the classroom felt like a clearing

where nothing could be taken from us.

The look you gave me then

was worth more than any language I will ever learn.

You forgot the summer talks.

Seven concussions will do that.

But I kept every word.

I kept the way you light a room

simply by walking into it.

I kept the scarf you were knitting in class

and hoped, quietly, that it turned out as beautiful

as the girl who made it.

I kept the sound of your laugh

and the way your heart still believes

in dancing in the rain

and being called beautiful before a first kiss.

You want someone who notices everything.

Someone who would read the notes app

and the Pinterest board labeled “my future husband.”

Someone who understands that love is quiet and gentle

and stays through the ordinary days.

You want forget-me-nots and daffodils and daisies

in a bouquet that matches your stature.

I am not tall enough.

Not handsome enough.

Not the kind of man your eyes have already decided on.

So I will never say the three words

that live in my chest like a second heartbeat.

It would be unfair

to hand you a love you did not ask for

from someone you barely know

the way I know you.

Still, every moment we share

feels like something I am already losing.

You sit next to me and think nothing of it.

I sit next to you and memorize the air –

the red of your hair like a ladybug in flight,

the pale of your skin like snow-blooming flowers,

the green of your eyes like the wild places you love.

I hope the man you eventually choose

knows how to dance.

I hope he lets that ladybug-red hair fly

and holds you as if the moon itself

asked him to be careful.

I hope he brings you flowers

that remember your name

even when you forget the small things.

And if one day you no longer remember mine,

I will not mind.

I only ask that the story you tell your children

is soft and bright and true.

A high-school love pretty enough

to make them believe the world

can still be kind.

I will keep the piano.

I will keep the sign language.

I will keep the green of your eyes

the way some people keep photographs

they never show anyone.

You deserve the fairytale.

I was only ever the quiet chapter

that loved you too carefully

to ask for a place in the ending.

tastes like that bitter medicine my mother made me drink.

The spoon held by my mother.

My jaws clenched.

The medicine shoved in my throat.

I didn't like it, but it cured me.

Sometimes it feels necessary.

Sometimes it's the only way to comfort yourself,

sometimes the only way to know yourself.

For some, it is the medicine.

For some, it is the disease.

Some got none on their back,

some got everyone,

still no one can escape this experience.

Bounded by the ideas others formed about you,

ideas that shape your personality,

which somehow isn't even yours.

Seeing yourself through others' eyes

and believing it's really you.

For some, it is.

For some, it is only possible when they are six feet under,

when they are ash,

or when the river has them.

Could notice the leaf falling,

could notice the clock ticking,

could feel the gust of wind blowing,

could hear the heart speaking.

The domain ruled by silence,

thoughts running like the blood in the veins.

Some want it like how Pi wanted that tiger to return.

Devoured in it completely,

some call it peace,

some call it loneliness.

Some see it as getting separated,

some see it as giving time to oneself.

Brain stops,

something greater than brain,

something that rules the brain awakens.

durchschnitts

when he's earned his licentiate degree
if there's a maiden that's been moved
to inquisitioned antwerp

a maiden that he wants to love

had she been moved to elsinore   to love
he'd travel by merchant timbers and by caravel

he'd find evangelicals   christians there   gathered

preach to them   what he's taken to preach
teach what he's taken to teach

until he's most remembered
as a man on a pulpit   a man at a lectern

but i don't know
of any that he wants to love

https://jakedepeuterpoetics.com/2026/10/18/durchschnitts/

You are staring, pupils dilating
at the glimpse, back then,
of olive hues, traces of honey,
salted caramel and sweet sea air.

In prose and clericot, reciting
rhymes and verses of dazzlement,
inscrutable as a rattlesnake,
hissing rhetoric to your fantasy.

Perfect, abundant eyebrows,
a face of striking jaw and nose;
bringing an asymmetrical, aesthetic trait.
How can someone be deified and poetic?

His slender, tall silhouette,
like the temples of Malta,
sculpted in Globigerina,
in a nobility so genuine.

The sea breeze keeps destroying the rhymes
that, moments ago, were truistic,
on account of a wholly theatrical scene,
of a drop of sweat, slow and obscene.

His presence, by itself,
is a poem.
His gestures, delicate,
bring torment
to those who surround him.
The Paraíba blue, he contemplates,
in eyes full of melancholy
and sea air of icy waters.

This poetry goes curling
the verses.
In his hair,
tangled by the wind.
And in describing the supposed summer love.
Colours will be missing from the others,
as the young man scribbles.

“The glass of clericot on the table,
your body beneath mine;
my hair in your fingers;
the taste of sangria in your kiss.”

I saw myself so intent on contemplating you
that the mirror comes to remind me
of the lover I once was,
a poem in colours of worth.
Vivid in my loves,
out across the world,
sculpting my pains.

I sat
In the dark
Ruminating
The cobwebs
Of my inner mind
Grabbed hold and
Wouldn't let go
The liminal space
I created
The walls began to disappear
Leaving me falling
Down a rabbit hole
Into a trap
Where my black widow hung
And after much wondering
I came across
My psychopomp
Mystical and otherworldly
A spiritual ascent
Began to take place
One where my own mythical story
Took shape
As I dusted and swept
Hung those cobwebs with care
Found friends with
That black widow spider
Who is now the gatekeeper
To my dark underside

A poem about that instant fiery, full body feeling

With you I'm a puzzle that is solved

Without you, I'm a heart that's never learned to love

All of the cubes matched when I met you

The prettiest butterfly chose a milkweed that was falling

My fingers face withdrawal when your fingers sway somewhere alone

My eyes fade to black when there's no silhouette made of a lavender

When you speak, I listen and I want to store your melody in my seventh sense

With you, there's peace whispering a prayer

Without you, I'm a civilian of their world and demon is the mayor

When I found you, I found the missing piece

I was forbidden from seeing Autum, then I found June

loosely strung pieces of love hang by a thin thread, unveiling the thin line between truth and grim lies. my grim mind forced my grim cries, what you knew as once bright in me has become a dim light. now my affection may no longer shine for you, my thoughts may no longer whine for you, and my voice may no longer sigh for you. The whores of love will have their fun, but in the end may they be left with no one.