The Shape of What We Carry: Poems Collection No. 1

Hey, Little Boy

Hey, little boy,
I wish I could go back—
back to the nights when your eyes were still unbroken,
when the world hadn’t yet taught you
what silence feels like after shouting.
Did we grow up too fast,
or did we simply forget
how to be unafraid?

I wish I could erase the moments
etched into your fragile heart—
the noise you shouldn’t have heard,
the anger you shouldn’t have carried.
I would’ve carried you
through those storms,
hidden you in the folds of my arms,
where no one could touch your tender soul.

I’ll make you laugh
when I’m sad,
and keep you safe
when I’m scared.
I’d let you shout
when you steal my last piece of food,
ruffle your hair just to see you roll your eyes,
pretend I don’t hear you humming songs you love
because I know you’d stop if I noticed.

Hey, little boy,
do you remember when we stayed up every night,
watching movies that made the world disappear?
When Barbie was our escape,
and heroes were as simple as those who cared?
I was your hero once—
not because I was perfect,
but because you hadn’t yet learned to see my flaws.

Do you remember how we’d cry in each other’s arms,
not because we wanted the pain to end,
but because it felt safe to hurt together?
Do you remember how the world outside didn’t matter—
just the flicker of the screen
and the sound of our laughter echoing in the quiet?

But you’re not a boy anymore.
Now, you see me as a woman first,
and a sister second.
And maybe that’s the tragedy of it—
you don’t need heroes when you grow older,
you only see people for what they are,
fragile and human,
cracked in ways they can’t hide.

I wonder if you still look for pieces of me
in the moments you guard so carefully,
if you think of the times we shared
when the world felt smaller,
when I could still protect you.
Or has the distance between us
become too wide to bridge?

Hey, little boy,
how was your first day of school?
I wanted to be there,
to tie your shoes,
to catch you when you fell,
to dance in your room
and make you believe
the world was small enough
for me to protect you.

But here we are,
the space between us heavier than words.
Now, when I leave,
you don’t miss me.
You say you don’t feel it at all.

Maybe it’s just your way of feeling—
a shield you’ve built,
your lack of emotion
the deepest sign that you care too much.
So I will miss us for both of us,
carry the weight of what we once were.
Maybe that’s just your way of growing—
learning to hold less,
learning to carry only yourself.
But why does it hurt so much?

Maybe that’s the beauty of growing—
we learn to live without the things
we once thought we couldn’t.
Maybe it’s better this way,
to love with less weight,
to forget what it means
to need each other so deeply.

But if growing means letting go,
why does it feel like losing?
Why do I still hold on
to every stolen laugh,
every quiet moment
when I was the one
you needed most?

Do you feel lighter now, little boy?
Because I feel heavier with every passing day,
dragging memories behind me like anchors.
The sound of your laughter haunts me—
not the way it is now,
but the way it used to be,
unfiltered, unguarded, ours.

And when I reach for you in my mind,
all I find are ghosts of what we were.
I wonder if you’ll ever understand
the art of feeling too much,
the unbearable weight of love
that has nowhere to go.

Maybe one day,
you’ll miss me the way I miss you now.
But even if you don’t,
I’ll love you enough to feel it for the both of us.
I’ll hold this pain,
this beautiful, unbearable pain,
because it’s all I have left of you.

I guess I’ll never know
if love grows lighter
or if we just grow heavier.
But hey, little brother,
I’ll always carry us—
even when you don’t.
And if you ever wonder where I went,
just look for the parts of you
that still feel loved—
I put them there.

And if one day you realize
you miss the girl who stayed up late,
the sister who made you laugh
even when her heart was breaking—
know that I never left.
I’ve been here all along,
loving you more than you’ll ever understand,
even when it feels like you’ve forgotten me.

The Boy Between the Pages

When I was small, I met a boy from the stars.
He spoke in questions too big for my tiny hands to hold,
but I carried them anyway,
tucked between the pages of a book
that smelled like childhood and rain.

He came from a world
where sunsets stretched like promises
and a single rose could matter more
than all the thorns that guarded it.
He taught me how love feels:
sweet, fragile, fleeting—
a glass globe that cracks if you hold too tight.

“Draw me a sheep,” he said.
But what he meant was:
“Show me something that stays.”
And I understood,
because I, too, lived on a planet
too small to carry my dreams.

He swept his volcanoes
like a child trying to tidy the pieces of their own heart.
He warned me of baobabs—
the quiet way some things take root
until they devour you whole.
And I listened,
because even then, I knew
what it was to fear what grows in the dark.

Sometimes, I still feel him near,
his laughter faint as a distant bell,
his golden hair a memory the sun won’t let go.
Does he wonder about me?
Does he mourn the grown-ups we’ve become,
too busy to tame foxes
or believe in stars?

Or perhaps he knows.
Knows that I still search for him
in the soft quiet of night,
in the spaces between words,
in the echo of my own questions.

He is not gone.
He lives in the shadow of my chest,
in the desert I carry within me.
He is the whisper in the wind that says:
"Remember who you are—
the child who saw with their heart
long before the world taught them to see
with their eyes."

Cold Hands

The sun climbs, unfeeling, over the wreckage of me.
It rains where no one can look—
a quiet storm,
pouring from lungs stretched thin,
pooling in a heart heavy with echoes.

On those formless nights,
my eyes stumble into the darkness of their own making.
Nostalgia drips, molten and relentless,
searing paths down my skin—
melancholy, a shadow I can neither hold nor escape.

In the distance, I still taste it:
a tenderness too soft to be real,
too sharp to forget.
It cloaks me in sweetness,
only to rot me from the inside.
It sings me into stillness,
then pulls me under,
where I am swallowed whole by its silence.

I am not a vine seeking light,
nor a rose dreaming of moonlit bloom.
I am the ash beneath the flame,
the dust in unseen corners.
Yet, even here,
its cold embrace finds me—
delicate, like the ghost of a touch
that lingers just long enough to break me.

It consoles me, yes—
like a lover I’ll never meet,
a ghost too beautiful to name,
too cruel to release.
It cradles me with hands
that could have been love,
but were only ever absence,
a fleeting warmth that fades
before it can settle in my chest.

Farewell, my hollow solace.
Stay, if you must,
etched in the marrow of my bones—
for you have always known the way to me.