rift

Over the past year, with the world feeling more divided and unsettled than it ever has, I find myself turning to poetry as a way to process emotions that feel raw and heavy. This particular piece was born out of a recent conversation with someone I thought I knew well—one of those moments that leaves you questioning not just the relationship, but the foundation of your shared history. In a time of polarized perspectives and buried truths surfacing, I suspect others have also experienced the pain of similar encounters.

rift explores the mirroring between our inner and outer worlds. The fragile ice, twisting roots, and muffled murmurs beneath the surface reflected the tensions within me, grounding my emotions in the physical world. These natural images illustrate the interplay between the tangible and intangible—our inner experiences shaped by the outer world and vice versa. Through this lens of corporeality, rift explores the cracks that form in relationships and within ourselves, asking whether these fractures are warnings of collapse or openings to something new and transformative.

I’d love know how the poem made you feel after you’ve had a chance to reflect on it.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published rift

it started with
a single
crack,
a thread
of ice
spidering
across the frozen lake,
each shard
splitting
the reflection of
Us
I thought was
whole,
into a kaleidoscope of jagged edges,
fragmenting
overlapping
refracting
distorting
truth and illusion,
forming
a rift in the foundation of our shared history,
threatening
the collapse of
our fragile ecosystem,
where your presence once rooted me,
now
unstable.

What of the roots,
I wonder—
twisting
deep beneath,
do they hold steady,
or did they
surrender
to the frost long before I noticed?

From across the divide,
your words
fall
like frost-bitten leaves,
dry and brittle,
crumbling
under the weight of their own
fragility—
like the ache of thaw, slowly
revealing
what has always been buried,
unspoken truths
floating
just below the surface—
tiny fissures masked by winter’s sheen,
murmur in hushed tones,
creaking
groaning
shifting,
echoing
the unease within me—
unsettled,
unknowing
if it’s a
warning
or the fragile
hope of
promise.