We built something beautiful on shaky ground.
Years walking a tight line.
Small quakes and big waves tearing us down.
Rebuild, reheat, repeat.

Resentment and love slipping through the cracks of the house of our friendship —
never changing the foundation.
Too attached to a pretty location.
Rehash, rehab, repeat.

But some places can’t be rebuilt.
Sometimes fixing ruins is futile.
Sometimes letting the earth breathe
 is better than suffocating its seeds.


Isn’t that who we are, my dear?
I’ve always been able to see death before a heart has stopped and lungs are empty.
I’ve always put down the sword and kneeled —
war is sometimes over before the fight is.
Letting go before smoke has cleared and limbs are stiff.

But you...
Stubborn and impossibly rash.
You tear and run and hit —
fighting even once the horn has been blown.
Armor clinking in an empty field,
surrounded by corpses and crows.
You gather your hands and press on an already caved-in ribcage,
talking to the ashes of someone long gone.

My sword in the ground, yours still in your hand.
I leave the cemetery, and you don’t see the grave.
My silent prayers whisper between your threats to the sky.
The blood under my nails now washed away by tears —
your fingers digging through the ground,
hitting a termite-eaten piece of wood.

My softer heart, once watching your attempts at victory with starry eyes,
is now an older mind wondering:
Is refusing to back down from a winless battle
and talking to slowly rotting flesh,
strength — or insanity?
Is fighting back the Fates and cursing at the underworld
an act of bravery, or recklessness?


Oh, Nostalgia,
how loved you are in all the wrong ways.
You’re sweetness, urgency, and sparkling longing —
an ever-fighting soldier for relevancy,
floating over lives and memories:
painted-over walls, picture frames, and childhood beds. Plastic buried in dirt, glittering under the sun of a slow summer.

Oh, Nostalgia,
you were never to touch anything you long for —
shallowly deep, or deeply shallow.
The fantasy of a past that never was,
a present that sometimes is,
and a future that always will be.
You turn sour when exposed to truth.
People smile at your beautiful face and forget it’s only a mask.
When memories can’t keep you alive anymore —
What will be left of you?
Open eyes, or a closed heart?

Oh, Nostalgia,
how futile your battles seem
when I’ve already slipped through the cracks.
I never fight for a place I can’t have or already hold —
a locked door, or a saved seat at a table with my name on it: Grief.
My melancholy — often mistaken for a curse rather than a blessing.
But what am I,
if not an ever-loving sadness and a lonely peace?
Catching people on a sunny day
and squeezing their heart until it bleeds out of their eyes.

Who am I,
if not a never-ending embrace mixed with papercuts,
or a promise ring made of barbed wire?
I’m letters never sent and faces to miss.
Words to regret and hands never to hold again.
Weapons put down along with coffins —
memories wilting like flowers on a stone,
yet blooming in the spring.
Hated, yet kept by everyone.
Only loved when known for long enough.
Doors parted, and lights turned off.


We wrote beautiful stories on stained pages —
paper too thin, ink bleeding.
Words muddled into each other
until we can’t remember the meaning of them.
Rethink, rewrite, repeat.

Fear and adoration, both braided,
yet tangled in well-threaded metaphors —
too ornate and twisted to be understood or separated.
Intelligibly scribbled with blood and laughter.
Remains, rebirth, repeat.

But some stories are never to be told.
If poets can’t sing our songs,
and people can’t listen to their voices,
our tales are destined to be remembered only
by those who lived through their unfolding.


Oh, Nostalgia —
how beautifully foolish of you
to think I would bend to your will.
How sweet of a thought, or a threat,
for you to have a script asked to be followed —
when I’ve always been known to break the rules.
How naïve of you to think I would ask to rewrite it,
instead of burning it
along with my poems inspired by your smile.

Oh, Nostalgia —
it’s not because you’ve always thought me silent
that I can’t scream for you to let go.
Ever moving and evolving,
yet walking so far behind you
I end up first in line for the exit.
It’s not because I’m always found in pain
that I can’t heal.
Never leaving, but searching for an out —
ending up at the tip of someone’s tongue,
clinging to their eyelashes in raindrops.

Oh, Nostalgia —
we might have met in the dark,
but I’ve never been fully blinded by your light.
Brighter than others,
but just as artificial when the sun is up.
And even if my skin was lighter by your side,
it still looked pale in the night —
leaving me wondering
if I truly needed you to shine,
or if your body shadowed mine until it swallowed me up.

Oh, Nostalgia,
how imperfect you look from a mile away.
How golden your skin looks from the shore.
How lucky I am to have touched it,
and how brave I am to walk away from it —
not unharmed, but unknown.
My dear friend,
did the green in my eyes get tainted
by the blue I’ve always been painted with?
Did the flaws you were never a witness of
finally scare you into desertion?
Did my legend finally catch up to your ears —
voices of strangers whispering that everything was the truth?

Oh, Nostalgia —
will my memory haunt yours like a twisted constellation?
Or will I ever be a torn-out page
in the book you seem to call life?
Did you know I would’ve never fought your departure
if you’d only asked?
How lovely it is to know
I never shackled you to my side —
that your hands left an imprint on my heart,
and that I was strong enough to push it away.

Oh, Nostalgia —
sometimes walking someone out the door
is harder than watching them fall away.
How ironic that you mourn like you love —
violently and fast —
and that I love like I mourn —
deep and slow.
How incredible it is
that I’ll always find you in me, and me in you —
sewn together with estranged souvenirs
and long-buried trust.
Lungs and hearts synch up for a moment,
yet no beat to be found.
Pulse static, and air pushed out.


We said some things in breaking voices —
love etched into accusations.
Louder than needed, yet too quiet to be heard.
Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Songs made of trust
and silence made of betrayal.
Untrained ears and bleeding mouths.
We told our novels to bedroom walls
and tear-stained pillows.
Repeat, repeat, repeat.

But some sounds are never to be heard —
like when a tree falls and no one is around to hear it.
Like when a heart breaks,
and no one is around to hold it.
Rebuild, rethink, remember.

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A little bit about the author :

Name : Istara

Pronouns : they/them

Age : 19

Location : France

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