The Shape of What We Carry: Poems Collection No. 2

The Hunter and the Duck

I wish I were a duck.
Not something grand, not something rare,
not a swan with its delicate tragedy,
its long, aching beauty
that begs to be watched.

I wish I were a duck,
ordinary, unnoticed,
the kind that waddles awkwardly on land
and never feels shame for it,
the kind that drifts in the water
and never wonders if it belongs.

A duck does not demand love.
It does not wait by the water’s edge,
watching its reflection,
wondering if it is enough.
A duck is not a symbol,
not a metaphor for longing,
not something that poets write about
when they are lost.

A duck is just a duck.
And I—
I am something too heavy with feeling,
something that lingers when it should leave,
something that wants to be known,
but not too much.

But one day, someone will come for me.
Not with love, not with tenderness,
but with hunger—
a need so simple it does not know my name.

To them, I will be just a duck.
One among many,
nothing rare, nothing worth remembering.
A shape on the water,
a moment of aim,
a quick pull of the trigger.

They will take me,
pluck me bare,
tear away the softness that once kept me warm.
They will roast me over fire,
season me just right,
sink their teeth into the body
I never thought of as worth consuming.

And for a while, I will be something to them.
I will make them feel full.
I will sit heavy in their stomach,
satisfy a hunger they will forget
as soon as it is gone.

Then, when nothing of me is left,
when I have given all I had to give,
they will discard me—
a useless scrap, an afterthought,
tossed into the toilet,
flushed away without ceremony,
without grief.

And they will never think of me again.

And maybe that is why I wish I were a duck.
Because then, maybe,
it wouldn’t hurt so much
to go unseen.

The Moon No One Misses

I have spent a lifetime learning how to disappear.
How to sit among them,
nodding in the right places,
laughing when the world expects it—
but never being seen.

Rooms devour me without consequence.
I could walk out the door mid-conversation,
leave my body behind like an afterthought,
and nothing would shift,
no one would stumble over my absence.
The earth does not grieve for footprints
that never pressed deep enough into the soil.

Perhaps I am the problem.
Perhaps I was never meant to be counted.
I was born to be the moon—
but not the full, golden kind that lovers sigh beneath,
not the kind that pulls tides or stops poets in their tracks.
No.
I am the waning crescent,
thinning, thinning,
each night taking a little more of me,
until I am a new moon—
a dark sky where something should have been.

They say I am hard to read,
but they never tried.
They never traced the way my light unraveled,
never noticed how my silence
was a language desperate to be understood.
They looked at me but did not see.
They heard me but did not listen.

And so, I keep waiting—
not for love, not for rescue,
but for someone to look up
on a night when I am gone,
and whisper, wasn’t there a moon here once?

The Beauty of Her Secret

 She has a secret.
She holds it like a flickering candle,
cupped between trembling hands,
afraid that even the hush of her own breath
might steal it away.

It is his name, pressed between her ribs,
stitched into the fragile lining of her soul,
where no one will ever find it.
It is his voice lingering in the quiet,
a whisper that echoes through the hollow spaces of her chest—
spaces he does not know he fills.

The first time she met him, she noticed his eyes.
Not in the careless way one notices the sun,
but like a traveler lost in the desert
who mistakes the shimmer of a mirage for salvation.
She swallowed the thought, buried it deep,
told herself it was nothing but a trick of the light.

For a time, she believed it.
For a time, they were just two people,
walking side by side,
his presence as familiar as breath,
as harmless as a passing season.

But then, one day, he laughed—
and the ground beneath her shifted.
Not violently, not suddenly,
but like the slow unraveling of something once tightly wound.
Not butterflies, no—
a field of flowers blooming and wilting at once,
love becoming loss before it was ever named.

And then she saw the way his lips curled
when he smiled,
the way his cheeks lifted
as if the world had never hurt him.
And she wished she had never looked.
She wished she had never let her heart
memorize the way his laughter lingers,
the way his voice settles like warmth
in places she will never reach again.

He does not know.
He sits beside her, his shoulder brushing hers,
so effortlessly untouched,
while she carves his absence into her nights,
while she breaks beneath the weight
of everything she cannot say.

She tells herself it does not matter,
that silence is gentler than rejection,
but her body knows better.
It folds around the ache, cradles it,
keeps it alive when she wishes it would die.

Because the truth is, she will carry this secret inside her,
press it deep into her ribs where it cannot escape,
where it will not taunt him,
where it will not stain his hands with her longing.

Because he—
he deserves the world.
And she—
she has only ever held ruin.

So she will love him like the moon loves the tide—
from a distance, in silence,
without ever being known.
She will let this love bloom and wither
a thousand times over,
a tragedy no one will ever read.
A story she will take to her grave,
where it will rot quietly,
like a flower never given,
like a name never spoken aloud,
like footprints in the sand
that the wind erases before they are ever seen.