🌫️ The Fog of “Not Yet”
Flash poetry on aging, block, and the ache of comfort
🌫️ The Fog of “Not Yet”
🫧 🫧 The Fog of Not Yet
Sometimes, memory isn’t a photograph
it’s a fog: tender, elusive,
reshaped by longing and time.
And sometimes, we convince ourselves we’re not ready
for the poem,
the shift,
the joy.
This trio of poems came from that in-between:
🕯️ the ache of now
🌙 the dream of later
🪞 the numb space between resistance and becoming
Each piece flickers:
with truth, softness,
and the quiet rebellion of staying still too long.
These aren’t grand resolutions.
They are moments of noticing
what it costs to wait,
what it means to hope,
and how small truths begin to rise when we stop hiding from ourselves.
⸻
✨ Golden Years
in the hush / of her sixty-fifth year
she tends the roots / of kin and self
walking slow / in wildlight
where breath / comes back easy
a rose-wrapped cottage
soft with music / and roses in full bloom
a laugh in the walls /
memory tucked into corners
art spills / across sunlit floors
gallery walls / or kitchen tile
stories spoken / not stored
held in hands / shared like bread
she leaves warmth / in her wake
kindness / in teacups
poetry / on windowsills
as time turns /
she moves softer
but leaves no less of herself
a legacy / not loud
but lasting —
love pressed gently
into the shape of a life
⸻
🍬 I Am Mean to Myself
sweet dissolves / on her tongue
a sugar hush / to silence the ache
quick comfort /
for a hunger / that isn’t food
still / the body drags —
heavy as a sodden coat
syrup-slow / tired to the bone
she puffs and puffs —
a smoke offering / to no one
lungs / tar-thick with longing
hands twitch / for something gentler
she slips beneath covers
a hiding place / that doesn’t heal
the world waits / loud with faces
but she won’t go / not yet
she shrinks / from change
dams the river / of becoming
blames the flood / for being wet
and somewhere
in the belly / of all that stuckness —
a life floats
stuttering
like a paper lantern
she once let go
and can no longer reach
⸻
🪞 Unlit
her favourite block /
lounges bold / in the open
long-limbed / smug
spread across the threshold
between want / and will
thoughts nap / like cats in sun
the spark flickers / then folds
heat with no flame /
just the comfort of maybe
she stays
suspended / in the soft
cushions of no
the known / the numb
where risk is theory /
and effort can wait
deep down /
she knows what’s brewing —
the churn / the clench
that comes before the break
stagnation / a shadow thief
peeling brilliance / off the walls
bit by bit
but still /
she stays
clinging to quiet
as if stillness
could save her
⸻
🌀 Reflections
These poems reminded me:
• Not choosing is a choice
• Stillness can soothe or it can slowly suffocate
• We carry lives inside us we haven’t dared to live yet
If you’re sitting in the ache of “not yet”
this is your reminder:
you’re not lazy.
you’re not broken.
you’re just paused —
and that pause might be sacred.
But also it doesn’t have to be forever.
⸻
🪞 A Prompt for You
“Write about a life you’ve imagined,
and what it feels like to watch it float away.”
Or:
“Name what you’re clinging to,
and what it might cost to let go.”
⸻
If any of this opened something in you I’d love to hear it.
A comment, a message, a whispered truth you needed to say.
We’re still here.
Still unfolding.
Still lit even if it twinkles.
With quiet defiance,
Dianne 💌
