Growing up can feel like being taught to distrust the worlds we once made for ourselves. As children, shadows have heartbeats, stars become eyes, and a flock of crows gathers like messengers from somewhere darker and more secret than the sky. Then knowledge jumps into our lives and names everything: stars are only stars, crows are only crows, darkness is only the absence of light. Simple and practical. I often wonder whether growing older means learning to see the world more clearly, or simply learning to see less in it. Perhaps imagination is not something childhood outgrows, but something adulthood keeps trying to correct and reshape.

“To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower”.

-William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

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Taking In The Light

Dark shadows grow from indifferent corners
as the sun sets over the leaning buildings,
these crumbling mountains.

Birds crowd around the fiery ball,
as if waiting for something to fall.

I remember thinking dark had sent its devils,
and how they awaited the day’s downfall.

At night, I was afraid to stay outside,
in the dark, beneath the watchful, 
hating eyes
of the piercing stars.

I later learned that those were not eyes,
and the flying creatures 
were not made by the dark.

Simple crows, I was told, 
were making dimples in the evening sky, 
taking in the light.

Miriam H. Monarres

Thank you very much for reading my work. It’s been a while since I published anything here. Lots has been going on in my life but now I will try to catch up with the posts. Thank you for your patience. Please share your thoughts in the comments and like my publication. This lets me know you enjoyed my work and helps other readers discover it. I truly appreciate every read, like, share, and subscribe.

The Darkened Streets

If you enjoy my work, please subscribe to my Substack so you do not miss any future posts. If you would like to support me further, please consider purchasing my poetry collection, The Darkened Streets, available on Amazon worldwide (https://a.co/d/fdyQbZa, or click the button above), or become a paid subscriber.

If you would like to make a one-time donation, you can now do so by buying me a coffee. Every paid subscription, donation, and book purchase helps support my education and improve my craft. Thank you very much for all your support!

Buy me a coffee

Once again, thank you for believing in me and supporting my work.

Love,

Miriam

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Power is often a matter of scale. To the small red bugs, the human hand is enormous and godlike, capable of lifting, saving, or destroying without explanation. Yet the humans are not truly powerful. Above them, something watches with a quiet violence of its own, ready to reverse the order. Around them, the trees stand still, carrying time in their peeling bark and witnessing every small act. I often think how easily tenderness can resemble control, and how every creature can appear powerful from below and vulnerable from above. Are we the hand or the bug?

“To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour.”

-William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

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A Hierarchy of Gods

These trees are resident memoirists,
counting seasons by shedding their skin,
leaving maps of time across their bark.

Small red bugs make homes on their continents,
running up and down their lands,
while we, little gods, seize their ruby bodies
and lift them toward the sky.

Sly cats watch us,
silent and unmoving.
In their minds, their claws have found our eyes,
and the little bugs have slipped
from our open hands.

Still, the memory keepers bear witness,
their continents stained with blood,
as little gods raise ruby bodies
toward the indifferent sky.

Miriam H. Monarres

Thank you very much for reading my work. Please share your thoughts in the comments and like my publication. This lets me know you enjoyed my work and helps other readers discover it. I truly appreciate every read, like, share, and subscribe.

The Darkened Streets book

If you enjoy my work, please subscribe to my Substack so you do not miss any future posts. If you would like to support me further, please consider purchasing my poetry collection, The Darkened Streets, available on Amazon worldwide (https://a.co/d/fdyQbZa, or click the button above), or become a paid subscriber.

If you would like to make a one-time donation, you can now do so by buying me a coffee. Every paid subscription, donation, and book purchase helps support my education and improve my craft. Thank you very much for all your support!

Buy me a coffee

Once again, thank you for believing in me and supporting my work.

Love,

Miriam

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Leave a comment

Our minds contain both memories and regrets. Regret can grow even without our attention. In fact, neglect may make it more persistent. We may bury our regrets deep, but there they simply wait, preserved. Pain can also change form – from something small and dormant into something vivid and fiercely alive. Perhaps the most difficult part is self-forgiveness: gradually learning to stop reopening the wound, and accepting that remorse may remain without using it as a weapon against ourselves.

“Then can I grieve at grievances foregone.”–William Shakespeare, Sonnet 30

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Where The Fence Sags Into Elderberry

Behind the rental house,
where the fence sags into elderberry
and the trash bins sweat in July,
I kept the plot of regret.

It grew fast,
with a talent for surviving neglect.
It sent up slick stems
that seemed to cut into the sky.

As the years wrinkled,
the regrets kept blooming:
obscene little flowers,
red in the ruined beds,
more alive than anything
so broken should be.

I hated their stamina.
   I think I hated my own.

There were tender plants too,
though I distrusted them:
the compliment withheld
from a dying friend
that put out leaves shaped like spoons.
His name stayed a bulb,
tight, papery.

Beneath the beds,
roots were loosening the packed earth.
Rot darkened into soil.
Nothing excused the blade,
but the hand around it
began to tire.

Underground, the bulb
was beginning to soften,
its paper giving way to root.

Miriam H. Monarres

Thank you very much for reading my work. Please share your thoughts in the comments and like my publication. This lets me know you enjoyed my work and helps other readers discover it. I truly appreciate every read, like, share, and subscribe.

The Darkened Streets book

If you enjoy my work, please subscribe to my Substack so you do not miss any future posts. If you would like to support me further, please consider purchasing my poetry collection, The Darkened Streets, available on Amazon worldwide (https://a.co/d/fdyQbZa, or click the button above), or become a paid subscriber.

If you would like to make a one-time donation, you can now do so by buying me a coffee. Every paid subscription, donation, and book purchase helps support my education and improve my craft. Thank you very much for all your support!

Buy me a coffee

Once again, thank you for believing in me and supporting my work.

Love,

Miriam

Leave a comment

Share

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