The gold ring slumbers on
the nightstand,
An unfaithful wife in a
broken marriage.
She walks the hallway with a
quiet tread,
And brings a stranger's scent
into her bed.
The sweet deceptions linger
on her tongue,
While all our sacred promises
are wrong.
She smiles at texts kept
hidden from her husband
sight,
And turns her back to meet
her lover at midnight.
The Architecture of her home
decays,
Lost in the fabric of her
deceitful, sinful, and shifting
ways.
A fractured glass, a
shattered trust,
Our sacred vows reduced to
dust.
You wore her scent upon your
skin,
And smiled as if it weren't a
sin.
I found the messages you
hid,
The cold, deliberate things
you did.
While I was building up our
home,
You left me standing there
alone.
The worse part isn't where
you slept,
Or all the dirty secrets kept.
It's how you looked me in the
eye,
And made me feel insane to
cry.
I see my face in a fractured mirror,
It reflects shattered images quite deep,
Secrets that the fragments can hardly hide,
A warped and slanted view of what I was,
Reflecting a pale painful pining face.
I try to glue the pieces together,
But that is a battle lost before-hand,
The fracture dealt, too wide and pulled aside,
The sharp sardonic sides still stay stalemate,
Reflecting myself as a ghastly ghost.
A shattered image of myself in pieces at my feet,
my vanity strewn all around left mirrored in my mind.
My outer shell self centred too, lived in real pretence
created pictures of me gone, all broken left in shards.
Cast down in anger in defeat, how will I find myself
by looking at one tiny piece, the real me see in there.
Could it be this tiny mirror shows my real reflection?
If I gaze without pretension take off my mask of fear.
Strip off my painted makeup, fresh face I am not lost
begin again my truest self, the mirror of my soul.
How brittle can the ruin of this heart slay
Like furrowed weeds burned into cinder ,
When church's flowers turn ebon and droop
As winds do not return... nothing moves
Not even air- chimes in their hazy curves:
*
I watch my own body... it becomes a stranger Melting like an anonymous outline
That enters the dark through crushed wails...
He is nowhere , not even a shadow flapping
While a eulogy of abandonment goes unsung, *
*
My fingers quiver in front of an altar…
pain grating the most benevolent
of prayers , chafed by slices of eve
that have no syllables for me…
For on this day, a deserted betrothal
leaves me hanging , hanging on a choir's loft.
And night breezes wash over me vanishing,
That I gaze at my bridal bouquet slowly astir...
A shattered vow, a runaway groom
Cry I must, in solo of dreaded season,
Waiting for hushabye to put me to sleep.
Shattered dreams—isn’t it strange
That they cannot leave me once and for all
And continue to live within me as a separate entity
As if awaiting their fulfilment.
Their presence is particularly noticeable in the mornings
When I wriggle out from under the duvet
Sit on the edge of the bed
To get up the very next second
But I suddenly sit there in a daze for a while
Inside me, the film is ending
And the credits are already rolling too fast,
So I can’t make out a single word
Who starred in it and who supported
Even though I’ve only just watched this episode.
I still remember how I was rowing a boat
To some unknown destination, but then,
A few minutes ago,
I knew the place and the time exactly
When I was due to arrive somewhere
Where my love was waiting for me with joy
And I was filled with a joyful anticipation
But then everything seemed to fade
As if wrapped in a transparent bag in the rain
Only raindrops were visible on the blurred screen
A whisper soft, a secret shared,
To you, my friend, I truly bared.
My heart, my fears, my hidden dreams,
We shared them all, it truly seems.
But then the words, like shattered seeds,
We're planted where they shouldn't be.
My private pain, a public show,
A whispered laugh, a knowing glow.
I turned to you, with tear-filled eyes,
"Did you betray me with these lies?"
You looked away, a force so cold,
" I didn't say it," you bravely told.
My secret's out, my trust is gone,
Left standing here, completely alone.
The friend I knew, a fading gleam,
A broken promise, a shattered dream.
From the dark velvet of night
To the million shards of glass
Diamonds giving uncountable light
Hanging in a universe made of brass
Down to the silhouette of the coast
Listening to the sound of the ocean roar
The lone figure of a woman, lost
Standing in awe, longing for more
The wet sand pulls at her frozen feet
As the foam washes over the dark
In her heart she feels an agony of defeat
So many words have left an ugly mark
She opens her hands to feel the water
Longing for it to wash away the pain
Trying to remember, she is the King’s daughter
Feeling about her ankles the claws of a chain
As the salty waves crash
A voice can be heard
The vision is seen in a flash
No more is her memory blurred
The irons break and release their hold
The shadows depart from her mind,
Stepping out of the dark and into the gold
Of the truth she was longing to find.
Written: May 20, 2026, for a contest sponsored by Silent One
1st place contest winner
*******************
Beneath the bastions of broken time,
moss-mantled memories murmur,
their whispers wound with winter’s weight,
their petals powdered into pale oblivion.
Yet in the orchard of absence,
where peaches perish and ivy coils,
my pulse still pounds—
a prayer pressed against the prison of stone.
Love lingers like lightning,
longing to lance the dark,
to carve a chorus from the cavern,
to kindle kisses in the kiln of night.
I long for honesty heedless,
for a heaven where truth is not tied down, where pledges aren't cloaked with
conceit,
but breathe, naked, unbroken.
But solitude sings its stubborn song.
Shields shine,
sanctuaries stand,
roses rise unseen,
Their perfume folded into lost air.
Knock, if you dare-
Not to conquer,
but to hold.
Bring birdsong, not battle.
Bring tenderness, not tyranny.
I will glimpse—
the sanctuary of passion,
the grace garden,
where every rose
radiates with the elixir
of its existence.
You trained long and hard to get to the top.
You did it in quick easy strides.
And then came the day, in Seoul I must say,
Where you took Canada's first Gold with pride.
Canadian's cheered with national pride
When you finally crossed that white line.
You broke the old record, and ran like a leopard,
You became the fastest man alive.
But now there's a fuss, about steroids and stuff
They've taken your title away.
You shattered our hopes, and left us to cope
With our newest hero, flushed down the drain.
Hang in there, Ben
I had dreams growing up, of how my life would be,
and it’s nothing like i imagined, that’s the sad reality.
I dreamed of being married, having kids and a house,
maybe some pets, and a handsome spouse.
I dreamed of a career, and being able to provide,
but they were just dreams, and they all died.
Reality hit hard, and it’s nothing like i thought,
I never imagined the pain that reality brought.
Life is a battle, and i aint the one winning,
Is this the price to pay, because I keep sinning?
Whatever it may be, it doesn't change what's real,
People say I'm exaggerating, hell nah i won’t chill.
Cuz you don’t know what it feels like, to live my life,
To walk in my shoes hurts like a deadly knife.
To have your dreams shattered, by some piece of ,
That took advantage of your innocence, without showing regret.
To know your own mother, sold you out,
Living your life, with nothing but doubt.
So don’t pretend to know, how it feels like to be me,
Cuz you can only imagine, but for me, its my reality.
I had dreams growing up, dreams that will always be just that,
Dreams that wont wont come true, and that is a fact.
silence is shattered
as robin begins to sing
in early morning
See it?
The cracks, the fractures - open, bleeding.
My mind laid bare, a battlefield of glass,
barbed wire threading through my thoughts,
indoctrinating spirals slicing through every soft impulse.
Chaotic proportionality,
twisted in the wake of your hands.
You constructed this wreck,
hammered rules into bone,
scarred my spine in silence,
every word a shard left to corrode in me.
visceral in every memory,
every cut screams with the echo of control.
Ant still-
you walk on it.
step after step,
your words drive splinters deeper into my skin,
indifference pressing down like stone.
Every slash bears your signature,
every jagged edge charts the space you occupy
while I lay shattered beneath it.
I do not flinch.
I do not move.
I am the ruin you made me,
exposed,
and yet you're still upright,
on the pieces of me
you discarded.
Shattered besides her
He sat beside her crib,
trying hard not to break down,
trembling like foliage in a whirlwind.
His hands cradled his head,
heavy with tears cascading like a spring.
Desperately, he willed her to stay awake,
fearing that if her eyes closed,
she might be taken away from him.
She was his world,
his beacon of hope,
his anchor amidst a raging tempest.
He could not forgive God.
"Why play dice with my daughter’s life?"
he murmured into the vast void.
"Take me instead,"
his prayer consumed by silence,
as the heavens remained quiet,
as they always are.
When her breath stalled,
and the hospital machines screamed
darkness rose like a tide and devoured him.
The delicate thread tethering his hope snapped,
and the world crumbled around him,
he died the same day
his spirit shattering alongside hers.
I thought I could count on you
So now what am I to do
AP: Honorable Mention 2026
Sub Categories
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.