Swan Reflections

  A lifetime feels too brief, too thin to hold all that I feel. Rings and vows; these words we say, they barely brush what’s real. I don’t know about destiny, or if we’re meant to last. But in every lifetime, I hope we cross paths. I want to be the quiet autumn, where you drift to me like a falling leaf. I’ll stay like shadows on quiet roads, hidden in places only you know. If I could, I’d be your armor, soft but strong around your heart, and you’d be the shield that I hold, the guard who keeps us safe in the dark. And though the world may call it fate or claim we’re bound by some line, I don’t believe in being owned, only in finding, every time. So if in this life I’m not the one, let the next one bring us near. In every life, I’ll look for you, hoping you’ll find me here. - A. Swan

You know that feeling when you’re just… there, watching life go on around you? Everyone else seems to be moving, loving, belonging, while you’re standing still, holding everything inside. That’s what this poem is. It’s me saying what most of us don’t say out loud that sometimes love is silent, unseen, and it hurts in a way you can’t even name. It’s about those nights you cry and nobody notices, the pages you turn looking for some sign of yourself, the pieces of you you leave behind hoping someone will find them. This isn’t some perfect Shakespeare kind of love; it’s messy, brackish, raw. But it’s real. And if you’ve ever loved someone quietly, or felt invisible in your own story, or carried a grief you couldn’t explain, then this is your lake too. This is your Swan. I may not be the Shakespeare of this time, Maybe not even Jane Austen in the newness of this shifting rhyme, But I am the Swan of this vast, endless lake The lake where I watch other swans entwined, Their wings brushing, th...