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Tag: poetry

  • Quiet Endings

    Quiet Endings

    June 6, 2025

    Unwritten & Understood

    Moving on

    It’s real.
    Endings.
    They hurt.

    Sometimes it’s losing someone you love.
    Sometimes it’s leaving a place you weren’t ready to let go of.
    And sometimes, it’s saying goodbye to a person
    you never wanted to let go of—
    but knew you had to.

    We all carry chapters that close.
    Doors that don’t open again.
    Final scenes that never got rewritten.

    I used to crumble at the sound of “never again.”

    Getting older doesn’t make the pain easier.
    But it does make you steadier.
    Wiser.

    You learn that what’s meant to stay… stays.
    And the rest?
    It becomes part of the road behind you.
    A part of the story—
    but not the destination.

    I used to think anything that mattered would announce itself.
    That if a door was about to close, I’d hear the hinge moan.

    But some things don’t warn you.
    They don’t creak.
    They don’t crash.
    They just go quiet.

    And the worst part?
    You don’t realize what mattered
    until it’s already folded into the noise of normal life.

    Some things wait.
    Some things knock twice.
    But the rarest ones?
    They don’t wait at all.

    They arrive and fill a void you didn’t realize existed,
    unexpected,
    real—
    and then they’re gone.

    Not because they wanted to leave.
    But because they had to.

    And no,
    timing doesn’t make something less true.
    It only decides whether it’s remembered
    or lived out loud.

    And maybe…
    maybe that’s mercy.

    Because not all things are meant to last.
    Some are just meant to wake you up.
    To show you what it feels like to be alive,
    And what it costs to carry it.

  • The Toy That Once Sang: Validation Conditioning

    The Toy That Once Sang: Validation Conditioning

    By Felecia Jacks

    June 18, 2025 | Unwritten & Understood

    Author’s Note: In a world where approval often dictates worth, many of us become like children tugging at a toy—desperate to hear its song, seeking reassurance in its melody.
    That’s called emotional conditioning.
    This poem explores the silent struggle of constantly striving for validation, even when it’s broken or elusive.
    Through the metaphor of a toy that once sang, it reveals the human tendency to persist—to pull harder—and to hope endlessly for a flicker of light amid the noise and silence of unmet expectations.

    The Toy That Once Sang

    You probably remember the times you felt it—
    The sweeter goosebumps of approval.
    Two hands come together and make a tap.
    You’d found the string
    that made the machine sing.

    You wanted a lullaby in encore.
    But sometimes the string stuck.
    Not because it was broken—
    Maybe you just didn’t pull hard enough.

    So you learned:
    Pull harder.
    Even when you didn’t want to.
    Even when your chest throbbed.
    And on the days the toy stayed silent,
    something behind your bones began to rot.

    In the quiet,
    your face surrendered to gravity
    a little more each day.
    Until it couldn’t rise above water
    without the noise.

    So you pulled that string
    harder,
    louder,
    more often than not—
    just to see a flicker of light.

    The one at the end of an endless tunnel.
    A light just out of reach,
    but bright enough to keep you hoping.

    The ocean between you and the glow
    carries what crashes with the weight of all your collapses.
    Each wave a memory
    of the string that once worked.
    And how you never really figured out
    what made it sing.

    Still,
    You keep pulling.
    Because a performance with no applause
    is easier
    than walking away from a toy
    that once made music.

    Even if it’s broken
    more times than not.