r/poemsandchill

Trust betrayed,
Innocence erased.
My past still hunts me in my sleep,
Old wounds pretending to be memories.
No one really stays long enough to care,
Still I wake up, work, survive.
Still I give whatever love I have left,
Even with a tired soul inside.

Sometimes I’m scared of myself.
I’ve hurt people too.
Not always out of cruelty,
Sometimes just confusion, pain, survival.
And now this softness returns sometimes,
Like rain in a long dead city.
I don’t know if I should trust it,
Or kill it before it leaves again.

Can broken people love gently?
Can guilt become something human?
Can a man outgrow his own shadows?
Or do we just learn to carry them quieter?

I don’t know.
But somewhere between regret and hope,
I’m still here.
Still trying.
Still not completely gone.

I ask myself in the quiet—

is it too much to want old love

in new hands…

or just a heart

that feels like home again?

Is it too much

to want to leave—

not to run away,

just… to breathe without this heaviness?

To have someone

who doesn’t just hear me,

but stays long enough to truly understand?

Just a little warmth,

a little attention,

a soft “are you okay?”—

why does it feel

like I’m asking for everything?

Maybe I’m not wanting more…

maybe I’m just tired of receiving less

than what my heart quietly needs.

And still,

I sit here wondering is it me…

or is it everything around me

that keeps falling short?

…because all I ever wanted

was something REAL

something that stays,

something that feels like enough.

We stand in the shadow of our own making,

where the question rises—

not whispered, not trembling—

but roaring louder than gunfire,

louder than flags snapping in divided winds:

How long will we destroy

what we do not know how to heal?

We have carved the earth with borders,

named the sky with gods,

and called it reason to break one another.

Centuries of fire dressed as glory,

of pride sharpened into blades,

of faith twisted into something unrecognizable—

something that forgets mercy.

And still we call it victory.

But look closer—

at the soil that once fed us

now heavy with the names of the fallen.

At cities that used to sing

now holding their breath in ruin.

At children—

always the children—

learning fear before language,

loss before love.

This must end.

Not in some distant, convenient tomorrow.

Not after one last war to settle them all.

Now.

Because hatred is not born—

it is handed down,

stitched into stories,

taught like tradition.

And if it can be taught,

it can be untaught.

We can show them something stronger:

that difference does not divide—it deepens us.

That culture is not a wall—it is a crossing.

That faith, if it is truly faith,

must open hands, not close them into fists.

What kind of god asks for ashes?

What kind of truth demands a child’s suffering?

What belief survives only by the breaking of bodies?

If it divides us, we have mistaken it.

If it costs our humanity, we have lost it.

We were never enemies.

Not really.

We were always reflections—

parents and strangers,

laughter and longing,

breathing the same fragile air

on a planet that does not belong to any side.

And yet we let war take it—

take everything.

War does not shield our children.

It devours them.

War does not defend what we value.

It hollows it out.

War does not prove strength.

It exposes our refusal to imagine better.

So imagine.

Be the ones who break the pattern.

The ones who refuse inherited hatred

like a chain finally dropped.

Be the generation that chooses courage

not in battle—

but in mercy.

The generation that says:

no more.

No more killing for difference.

No more graves for pride.

Because they are watching—

the children.

Watching what we build

with trembling hands.

Watching what we destroy

without thinking.

And one day,

they will ask us who we were

when it mattered most.

Let us answer without shame:

We chose peace

when it was hardest.

We chose understanding

when anger was easier.

We chose each other—

not as enemies,

but as human beings

worthy of breath,

of dignity,

of tomorrow.

And in that choice,

we gave them more than survival.

We gave them the one thing

war never could—

a future.