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Best Poems Written by Amanda Nolan

Below are the all-time best Amanda Nolan poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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The Eternal Question: God, No God, Maybe God

Sometimes, I think my soul remembers Him before my mind does, like there is something ancient stitched into my chest that pulses without needing proof. I have never seen Him with my eyes, yet I have felt Him in places where no one else was. All I had to do was pray, and the Holy Spirit filled me with tears and love. The silence got too loud, and the world stopped making sense. When my breath came back after I swore it would not. There's a way to His absence that only makes sense if He is real. I believe not because I was taught to, or because I am afraid of nothingness, but because something inside me softens every time I call His name. I have doubted, screamed at the sky, stood at graves, and wondered why mercy skips some houses. Still, I've seen beauty rise out of ash too many times to call it a coincidence. I’ve felt peace when there was no reason for it. I've watched love survive things it never should have. Science explains the world's machinery. Faith explains it's music. There is a kind of math to the stars, yes, but there's also poetry in the way the ocean knows how to kiss the shore, then leave, only to return again and again like forgiveness. I don't trust Him blindly. I trust Him because the world without Him feels too empty to bear. There are nights when my prayers feel like voicemail messages left on an ancient line, even in silence, I find presence. Maybe He doesn't speak the way I want Him to, and the problem isn’t absence, but my volume. I don't need lightning to believe. I need the way my heart steadies when I say I'm not alone. Faith to me is not certainty. It's choosing to believe when nothing is guaranteed. If God were small enough to prove, He wouldn't be big enough to trust. I believe because even in my weakest moments, something keeps holding me up. Something invisible. Something real. God.

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The last moments of my life

Dear PoetrySoup
To my best nine days
50 poems sent

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Leaving PoetrySoup, see you on the other side

I have to leave you
I am going to die soon
See you in heaven

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I'll Kiss Him Like Forever Is An Option, part three

There are nights I want to tell him. Nights I want to break down completely and admit that this doesn’t end the way he thinks it will. I imagine his face if I said it out loud. That I’m dying, that no medicine will undo it, that the slow fade has already begun. I imagine him trying to hold onto me harder, as if strength could rewrite biology. I imagine him looking at me with grief where love used to be. I can’t bear it. So I lie. I lie by omission, in the way I kiss him goodbye with too much desperation, in the way I memorize the way he smells, in the way I look at his hands and think of the time I will no longer be around to hold them. I lie by letting him dream, by laughing at our future plans, by keeping quiet when he talks about growing up together. I lie because I love him too much to let him lose me before he has to.

     Every time he carries me, I pretend it means I’ll rise again. That my body isn’t betraying me. That we’ll walk into some kind of miracle without realizing it. He wraps me in blankets, brings me water, gives scratches in circles into my back like he’s drawing some invisible symbol for healing. I pretend it’s working. He needs me to pretend. Maybe I need it too. He knows everything except the only thing that matters. I will not survive this. If he ever finds out, it won’t be from my mouth. He’ll learn it in the silence I leave behind.

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If they see her dying face, part two, written but never sent series

She will never tell a soul that she will die. She tells everyone, even the people closest to her, that what they found will be curable, at least mostly. Her brother, her friends, her boyfriend, and her extended family will be stuck with the lies until she takes her last breath. After she is gone. She cannot bear to see their faces when they hear it. When they see her without her makeup. If they saw her dying face, she would break. The thought of seeing the people she loves hear the news is almost worse than hearing it for herself. She doesn't know how to imagine their tears without trembling in fear. She doesn't want the people she loves to prepare for the death of a 15-year-old girl. How could she die now? Terrible. From this, so soon. Still, there is more to discover. The testing will never end. The medicine is infinite, and still being modified. She takes trips back and forth to the hospitals, trading locations often. There is a girl I know who rejects pity and won’t tell a soul what was truly found in her head. To tell them it has to be removed. To tell them there is so much more to discover still. There is someone I know who sometimes cannot walk and seems to spend more time on the floor than on her feet. Just like the boy she knows, on the days she can, she uses every part of her to show her energy, smiles, and laughter, pulled through her stomach that were hidden deep underneath the true weight she feels. She prays no one will see her in the way that she notices the boy she knows, the people around her who live secret lives, the girl she knows, the teachers she knows, the parents, the children, and the invisible. She prays, believing no one sees what she does when no one is watching. Her screaming for help in silence as she slumps in her seat, staring at her desk, suffering behind frozen eyes. There is a girl I know who loves Jesus and accepts whatever happens, is meant to be. Maybe it's because she will die. She tries to sit tall and get everything out of what may be her last breath. To care for the people noticed only by her. Crossing the line from invisible, to being. To being a friend. To being a shoulder. To being a student, a daughter, and a polite girl. Happy. The makeup she seamlessly hides behind, is to her, a soft shield. It is there to protect the people around her. She is accepting and loving, and if they see her dying face and crumbling body, her last moments will not be enjoyable. There is a girl I know. A girl who crossed the line.

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There is a teacher I know, part two, written but never sent series

There is a teacher I know. Someone who walks into the classroom like he’s stepped into a memory, quiet and worn, yet still showing up. He doesn’t speak much, but when he does, his voice carries more weight than volume. His words are deliberate, as if each one has been measured before release. There is something about the way he stands, hands folded like he’s holding something in. Something too personal, too heavy, too old to name. He looks at his students as if he sees all of them at once, past their jokes, past their laziness, into something deeper. No one notices the way he glances at the clock when the room grows too loud. No one notices how he lingers by the window, not for the view, but for the silence.

There is a teacher I know who stays late when the hallways are empty, surrounded by crumpled papers and untouched chairs. He grades quietly, with a patience that feels almost unreal. There’s a sadness in the way he moves, like someone trying to find meaning in the same lesson plan he’s used for years. He teaches with this kind of quiet hope, like maybe this time, someone will understand. He never says much about himself. He gives pieces away in passing comments, stories buried in metaphors, feelings folded into analysis. His eyes flicker when someone brings up loss. His mouth pauses before certain names. Most students don’t notice. They don’t care to. They laugh too loud, speak too quickly, and forget he is there once the bell rings. He becomes invisible the moment he stops speaking.

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Written but never sent, part one



There's someone I know. Someone who probably doesn't know me. I seem to know him more than he knows himself. I know everything about him, and I know nothing at all. There's someone I know who has blind friends around him. Friends who laugh too loudly and speak without care. Unable to understand the difference between pain and laughter. Friends who mistake attention for care, jokes for love, and noise for connection. They orbit around him but they never truly see him. They mock what they don't understand, celebrate the shallow, and drown him in their nonsense while he stays silent, smiling just enough to survive it. To hide it. I watch him follow along, and I see the hurt tucked behind his words that trail behind. This is a truth that only I can see. I seem to worry and care for him more than the people he spends his time with the most. He races to keep up. It is interesting to me. Almost strange. It is interesting that I am the one unnoticed and so far away, but caring, recognizing, and understanding him from across the room. The one so far away, yet I see him. I recognize him. I understand him. From across the classroom. Across people. Past lives. Through faces. Into hearts. There's someone I know who spends his time surrounded. He spends his time with noise, stupid mistakes, and friendships that rot beneath the surface. He lets them speak for him, lets their voices drown his own, because being alone might feel worse than being surrounded by the wrong people.

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Maybe She Survives

Her parents, distant as ever, don’t notice. They’re caught up in their own lives, their own struggles, their own disconnection. They don’t ask about her health anymore; they don’t wonder if she’s okay. If she’s honest with herself, she doesn’t think they ever really did. They didn’t know how to love her in the way she needed, in the way that would make the broken pieces inside her fit together. Maybe they didn’t know how to love themselves either. Maybe that’s why they were never able to teach her. Maybe they were just as lost as she is.
She tries to reach out sometimes, but it always feels like a waste of breath, like speaking to a wall that doesn’t even acknowledge her voice. She craves connection, craves understanding, but every time she opens up, she feels the distance between her and everyone else widen. Her trust is a fragile thing, splintered into pieces so small that it’s hard to see the whole picture anymore. She wants to trust, wants to believe that someone will catch her when she falls, but the ground beneath her feet always feels too shaky, too unpredictable.
So she keeps going, keeps pretending, keeps hiding the things she can’t say. She doesn’t know how to fix what’s wrong with her, and maybe that’s the scariest part. She doesn’t know if there’s a way back from this place of emptiness, this place of constant searching for something that feels like home. But maybe she’s not supposed to have the answers right now. Maybe she’s not supposed to know what’s next. Maybe the only thing she can do is survive. Maybe, just maybe, that’s enough. She survives because what else can she do? Each day feels like a fight to keep her head above the water, but somehow, she manages. It’s not graceful, it’s not pretty, but it’s enough. That’s all she can ask for, just enough to make it to tomorrow. The thought of tomorrow, though, is a double-edged sword. Some days, the future feels like an endless void, stretching on forever, full of nothing but the same pain, the same loneliness. Other days, it’s a faint flicker of hope, the idea that maybe things could change, maybe she could find a way to feel whole again. The days don’t stay the same for long. The flicker fades, and she’s left in the dark again.

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Those Moments Don't Last

She’s afraid of what comes next, afraid that her body will fail her again, afraid that she’ll end up exactly like her parents, distant, cold, and incapable of giving love. They never taught her how to trust, how to love herself. Maybe they never knew how. So, she keeps moving, one foot in front of the other, because that’s what you do when you have no choice. She keeps pretending, keeps hiding the parts of herself that feel too fragile to expose. The pain is there, always lurking just beneath the surface, but it’s easier to bury it than to face it. The world keeps turning, and she keeps walking through it, a little more broken each day, but still moving. She doesn’t know what it means to heal, but maybe she’s not supposed to. Maybe healing isn’t about fixing what’s broken, but about learning to live with it, to carry it without letting it crush her. And maybe that’s enough. Maybe that’s all she can ask for.
She doesn’t know what it would feel like to be whole. Not really. She imagines it sometimes, in stolen moments between breaths, in the quiet spaces where her mind drifts. What would it be like to wake up and not feel the weight of the world pressing down on her chest? To walk through a day without that nagging voice in the back of her mind, telling her she’s not good enough, that she’s not doing enough, that she’s not enough at all. Those moments don’t last. They slip away just as quickly as they come, leaving her grasping at air, chasing after something she can’t quite touch. So, she settles back into her routine, the daily rituals that are supposed to make her feel normal. She eats, she sleeps, she pretends. The pretending is harder now. It’s wearing thin around the edges, and she can feel the cracks spreading. Every day, it becomes more difficult to keep up the illusion. What else is there to do? What else can she do but keep going?

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I'll Kiss Him Like Forever Is An Option, part one

The sickness is quiet, like the way winter creeps in. First with a chill, then with a silence so heavy it makes your ears ring. I carry it in my bones, in the soft tissue of my ribs, in the tiny thread between heartbeats that whispers: it’s not much longer now. I don’t say a word. Not to my friends. Not to my extended family. Not to my boyfriend with his warm brown eyes that search my face like they’re looking for something to hold onto. I smile, and I lie. I say it’s treatable. I say it’s manageable. I say the medicine will help, and that the tiredness is just from school, and that my bones ache because I slept weird, and not because they’re rotting from the inside out. I tell them the falling will stop, the vision will fix, and the pain will be gone. I tell them what was found is going to heal and is smaller than it sounds. I tell them I’m fine in a tone I’ve rehearsed so many times I almost believe it myself. Almost.

The truth is, I’m dying. Slowly, softly, like a candle left to burn in an empty room. I’ve decided they don’t get to know. Not because they don’t deserve the truth, but because I don’t want to watch their faces fall apart. I don’t want to memorize the grief in their expressions like I’ve memorized the way my hands shake when I’m alone. I don’t want pity. I want memories to stay warm, untouched by the frostbite of goodbye.

So I’ll laugh with them under the sun, even though my skin bruises from the light. I’ll dance in kitchens, even if my legs are begging for rest. I’ll write love songs with trembling fingers, kiss him like forever is still an option, and lie beneath the stars pretending I’m not slipping through the cracks of time. I’ll go on pretending until my body gives out, and even then, maybe they’ll just think I was tired. Maybe they’ll never know the truth was blooming beneath my skin like a field of bruised violets. Maybe they’ll say I was strong. Maybe they’ll think I believed I would survive. I won’t. I just want them to.