Lavender clung to Grammy like a familiar blessing,
a soft aura rising from her walk-in closet~
that kingdom of faux furs and pearlized buttons
where dresses hung like quiet stories waiting to be told.
I sat beside her at her dressing table,
watching the slow choreography of her bronze-brown hair
as she brushed it into its practiced sweep,
each stroke a reminder of the elegance she carried
long after her hand-model days had faded from magazines.
She tore two sheets of paper poudre,
handing one to me as if passing down a secret rite.
“Gently,” she said, and I followed her movements,
feeling the powder lift whatever childhood dust remained
from my ten-year-old cheeks, leaving them soft, matte, new.
Foundation, rouge, a whisper of plum on her lips~
then her porcelain hands folded mine inside them,
their warmth steady, their touch feather light.
“You’re a lady now,” she said; in that moment, I believed her~
believed I was becoming her lady-in-waiting,
one beautiful enough to be part of her gracious royalty.
The winds blow bleak and torrential against my face.
I’m told it’s much to bear and my ship will be wrecked.
But, I see the wind and so strengthen my mainbrace
For me the wind has an unexpected effect.
I set my back strong to the wind and filled my sails.
Let it blow how it might, it will take me onward.
Before the brightness of the sun ev’rything pales.
In that valiant hope I set my true course dawnward.
The sun hangs low on familiar streets,
Golden light on memories sweet.
Laughter echoes through the evening air,
A season of freedom beyond compare.
This summer feels different, caught in between,
Not quite who I was, not yet what I’ll be.
A suitcase waits by my bedroom door,
Filled with dreams and so much more.
There are tears for the friends I’ll leave behind,
And excitement for the future I hope to find.
New roads, new faces, and skies unknown,
A chance to discover a life of my own.
As autumn paints the trees in gold,
I’ll carry the stories my hometown told.
Though change may come with a bittersweet call,
I’ll step forward with courage into the fall.
Becoming better . . . what does that really mean?
Each person on this planet daily is learning.
Learning in school, yes, but mostly from experience.
In becoming better, will you be returning
to the place of light where God wants for you to be?
Make each new dawn the harbinger
of a glorious and beautiful destiny.
Let love be the tune your heartstrings are strumming
so that in death, you’re rebirthed into heaven’s sunrise
as the effervescent spirit you’re becoming.
Becoming my own essence that quest,
of marked candid introspection,
a disposition to embark on,
recondite global.bold voyage,
jettison vacuous self-distrust,
that sabotaging virus veneer,
I once did sanction as odious habit,
for protracted periods at first blush,
phases I squandered, lost tally of,
so immaterial to core perception
Autumn stirs effervescent dreams awake,
In crisp, cool mornings when light burns
Harbinger of joy that the night will forsake,
As the narrow breath of a prayer turns
Blessing away the past with all its heartbreak,
Arousing the melodies as starlight returns
What love is becoming, is never a mistake,
As leaves fall gently, with prayerful concerns
This is the love that my heart hopes to partake,
Like a psalm of praise, only life’s spirit discerns
Effervescent rains wash the eucalypt,
Paperbarks becoming bathed in gold,
Harbinger of a vibrant spring,
Fragrant petrichor ascends,
Susurrous bush awakes,
Wattle starts to bloom,
Water pools deep,
Fresh leaves stretch,
Warm sun,
Glow.
Becoming one with the universal pulse,
that coruscant hue endued vibrancy benign,
I eschew lethal inhibition toxic,
inhaling meteoric shards of,
effervescent mood boost capsules,
whilst power plugging brain dead cells,
into trancelike transmitters of prana,
unleashing channels stymied by a jinx,
healer, harbinger heroic of invisible field,
whose silver winged prowess pivotal
I'd been laid low. I'd been let down.
I came to this blue lagoon to drown
and settle into the silt -
when the calliopean lilt
of a nymph in diaphanous gown -
a heavenly harbinger of hope,
an effervescent means to cope,
with a tune, so sweetly humming,
revealed a means of becoming -
might my muse and me, elope?
He is recently becoming a lazy bum
Been drinking the effervescent rum
Ignoring his petite new wife
with a tounge sharp as knife
Harbinger of crazy thing to come
Shrill she shouts and plays drum
Poker faced he lies dumb plum
The neighborhood gossip is rife
Tried all tricks to end their strife
Both not grooving into their fulcrum
She deliberately sashayed across the room,
the very breathless harbinger of lost desire;
all the men whom she passed by seeming to consume
this effervescent commingling of ice and fire.
In an instant, witless men succumb to her becoming,
as she played them like a bass fiddle, strumming.
If every river longs to find the sea,
what shore is waiting for a soul like mine?
Why was I taught to count the passing years,
yet never taught what they were passing toward?
If mountains rise by carrying the earth,
what unseen weight am I supposed to bear?
Why does my heart recognize homes
my feet have never found?
If every star is placed within the night,
who scattered us across the dark?
Was I made to bloom,
or merely to become the seed
of someone else's spring?
If time is only borrowed breath,
who is waiting for its return?
Why do we spend our lives becoming,
yet never arrive?
Is the horizon always distant
because meaning was never meant
to be reached—
only followed?
And when this small flame
returns its borrowed light to dawn,
will I finally know
what I was meant to become?
I wondered where the teardrops go,
Once they have been softly wept.
Do they wander with the winds,
Or rest where Heaven's secrets slept?
I followed one through autumn fields;
It kissed the earth without a sound.
By spring, a bloom of bluebonnets
Had crowned the very place it found.
Another sought an ancient oak
And disappeared beneath its grain.
The tree stood taller year by year,
Made stronger by another rain.
Another reached a stranger's heart
Who smiled though burdened by despair.
It bloomed into a gentle grace
That neither soul knew lingered there.
For every teardrop remembered hope
When I remembered only pain.
It gathered all my broken prayers
And whispered them like summer rain.
For every teardrop remembered love
When I believed that love had flown.
It stitched together thread by thread
The tattered places I'd outgrown.
For every teardrop remembered light
Though all I saw was endless night.
It kept a flame I could not tend
Until the dawn returned my sight.
So, if you wonder where they go,
Do not search the earth or sea.
The tears I thought the world had lost...
Were busy becoming me.
I am not who I was yesterday,
not fully who I’ll be tomorrow,
just something in between the light
and every shade I used to borrow.
The world keeps shaping me in ways
I don’t always understand,
like rivers carve the stone by time
without a plan, without a hand.
And maybe growth is just this art—
becoming while you’re still unsure,
a gentle shift inside the soul
that learns to bend and still endure.
This poem is about personal growth and change. It shows how people slowly evolve over time, even when they don’t fully realize it.
Nette Onclaud
Into Quiet Becoming - Paz
06-01-2026
The ancient wood performs no roll call;
the bark has swallowed your stride.
You are not lost beneath the canopy;
you have simply thinned into the quiet, unmeasured air.
The chest ticks like an engine,
a violent friction where the obsolete self comes undone.
To exhume an immortal spark from this rooting floor is to demand
that the frost possess a memory of the sun.
Submit to the blinding dark until the stillness proves
that to disappear is the first step toward becoming whole.
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