Lewis Raynes Poet Spoken Word

Notes About The Poem

I have been delving into theatrical spoken word poetry. This is about the love going from blind love without healthy communication, to comfort to empty alone and losing your own identity.

Broken: Where hope learns to starve

[Lights warm. Speaker stands still, hands open, voice soft with a rising glow.]

I. HOPE
She begins like sunrise—
soft, golden, believing the world is kinder than it is.
She thinks love is a door that always opens,
a room where no one ever leaves.
(gentle smile, small upward gesture) 
She fears people abandoning her,
but she still builds a home out of hope,
placing every brick with trembling faith
that this time—
this time—
someone will stay.
She apologizes for things she didn’t do,
as if sorry is a spell
that keeps the walls from cracking.
(step forward, voice brightening) 
She believes love means she needs to accept everything he does,
like love is a river
and she is the bank
meant to hold it,
no matter how hard it floods.

II. THE SHIFT
(voice steadier, pace slowing) 
She forgives all the big differences between her and him
without ever asking why they matter.
She thinks love means he understands her thoughts
and so small conversations are not required—
as if silence is a language
and she is fluent in longing.
(hand to chest, breath held) 
She is prepared to forgive differences between their desires,
folding herself into smaller and smaller shapes
until she fits the outline he drew
before he ever met her.
She does not value the small conversations about unique quirks—
the tiny sparks that make two people real—
because she was taught that love
is the absence of friction,
not the presence of truth.

III. THE CRACK
(voice tightening, shoulders tense) 
She wants him to be perfect
with no broken parts,
nothing messy—
forgetting that people are mosaics,
and mosaics only shine
because they were shattered first.
But she holds her breath anyway,
waiting for him to become
the impossible version of himself
she dreamed up
to keep her own ghosts quiet.

IV. THE FALL
(lights dim slightly; voice lowers, slower, heavier) 
And hope—
that bright, trembling thing—
begins to rot.
Because a love built on silence
echoes.
A love built on fear
hollows.
A love built on disappearing pieces
teaches her how to vanish too.
(step back, voice cracking like dry wood) 
She wanted a forever
but she built it out of smoke.
She wanted a partner
but she sculpted a ghost.
She wanted safety
but she traded herself
for the illusion of it.

V. HOPELESSNESS
(long pause. Voice nearly a whisper.) 
And now—
she stands in the ruins
of a house she never questioned,
holding the blueprint of a life
that was never hers.
The door she kept open
is swinging in the wind.
No footsteps.
No return.
Only the echo
of all the things she forgave
to keep from being left—
and the quiet truth
that she abandoned herself
first.
(lights fade to black)

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