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Best Poems Written by Hanna Joyton

Below are the all-time best Hanna Joyton poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Hanna Joyton Poem

Good and Faithful

I've never seen an angel.
I seldom hear your voice.
But I know you sent Jesus
to offer us all a choice.

I know I've felt your glory.
I've felt your mercy and peace.
I know you're writing a story
about how much you love me.

I've never seen an angel.
I don't have to to know you're real,
because I can feel you beside me
taking away my fear,
giving me peace,
showering me
with your mercy and grace.
And when one day
I see you face-to-face,
I hope you'll say
that I ran my race
to the fullest.
"Well done,
good and faithful servant."

Details | Hanna Joyton Poem

Sugar-free Red Bull

Algebra sheet limp beneath my elbow,
mocking me in equations I’ll never understand.
I open Google Classroom like a coffin.
The deadlines stack up
in a mound of unmarked corpses,
in a thousand unmarked graves,
in old, unmarked sections of my mind—
I'd name them here, but who cares?
I’m too tired to mourn them.

Sugar-free Red Bull—
because I don't sleep,
because I care more about the number on a scale
than the ones on my grade report.

This could be a cry for help,
but hunger feels like control.
I'm proud of my successes
and furious at my downfalls.
(I was told that line was too clean;
I told them there's nothing clean
about starving yourself
for adrenaline)
I skip every outing with food,
because I don’t trust myself
near cake or kindness.

This body is tired
of being punished
for not being perfect.

I used to laugh.
Used to blow out birthday candles
without wishing about numbers.
Used to read like it was breathing.
Used to say yes— to pizza, to people,
to living.

I was a star student.
Straight A’s.
Sticky notes with dreams on them.
Friends who thought I was funny,
teachers who said I’d go far.

The world asked for excellence;
I gave it my childhood.

And what did it give me back?
A mind that only speaks in panic.
The hollow ache of every missed meal,
every missed moment.

Counting calories 
like rosary beads.
Repentance
for every digit
comes as self-loathing at night
rolling the acidic taste of every 
"but you used to be happy"
underneath my tongue.

The irony
that algreba class is my lowest grade
when I'm consumed by math every single day—
How slow can one get
to one thousand?
If the chips I ate yesterday equal two hundred,
and this drink is ten...
I didn't always think of food as numbers—
maybe that's why I hate algebra.

Maybe that's why I hate everything.

Details | Hanna Joyton Poem

But It's All I Have

A day, once, when you were just a name.
A name, once, and then it all changed.
Changed, once, and never again.
God, please— never again.
I don't want to look back one day
And think on these memories
And realize that the pain has numbed

Yes it hurts
Yes— yes, it hurts
And I don't want it to stop
I don't want you to go away
I don't want healing to come
I don't want you to be a scar
I learn to get used to
I want this to fester,
To bleed slow and thick
Stuck like initials carved in a tree
I want your smile to still
Steal my words
Even from memory

I know time is a painkiller
And there's no way to stop it
But I'll scratch and claw
The entire way into the pit
As I tumble from this brink of insanity
Where I have built my home
And back into the world of the living
And a sense of normalcy
Screaming your name
And begging for you to save me

I know I can live without you.
This pain isn't a part of me.
I know.
But I want it— God, I want it.
I'll stand barefoot on the broken glass
Of our shattered, messy past
I’ll grip it 'til my knuckles turn white
And I’ll love you ‘til the day I die

Details | Hanna Joyton Poem

Blank White Pages

I never reached out for your hand—
Fingers interlacing, hearts intertwining.
My words blistered on my tongue,
And I tucked the unanswered glances 
Back into silence,
Like love letters never sent.

What do I do with the love I couldn't give?
I'll bleed it onto blank white pages,
Ink running from my arteries.
My stanzas will contain
The glory of my memories,
And my metaphors will cradle
A heart too heavy for your hands.

I'll write us into existence—
A universe where you know 
What it means 
To be loved.

I'll carve my ache into rhythm.
My tears will fall in poetic cadence,
And my agony will rhyme.
I'll fight the ugly beast—
Time—
So that I never forget
That you existed
And that I didn't get to keep you.

Details | Hanna Joyton Poem

The Sacrament

Bliss as words like wine pour over a pure slate,
staining it with their meaning
and reddening it with their tones.
Fervor takes over;
the scene unfolds like something already decided
as one letter follows another
like drops from a chalice,
dripping until it overflows.

My neck is craned from fatigue
and out of reverence
as ideas become flesh before my eyes.
Each word is holy—
each character is bread to the wine of emotion.
Sleep is a martyr,
dead on the altar of my craft.
My hands shake from the caffeine 
flooding my bloodstream
and the adrenaline joining it
as the ritual continues.

This story is my body.
These words are my blood.
I do this for remembrance—
the hope that I can become something more than
what I am.

Details | Hanna Joyton Poem

The Acolyte

The caffeine on my desk
and bags under my eyes
are evidence of my faithfulness—
devotion to a beast
to whom I've pledged eternal fealty.
The ache in my knuckles
and the draining battery on my laptop
are the marks of a true believer.
The keyboard is my altar,
where I lay out my offerings.

She demands my sanity, my peace of mind.
Her twisted grip pulls me into Her,
and I stare at a blank page
considering my next sacrifice,
the next piece of me to chip off
arranging the scattered collection into words.
Will it be good enough?
Is it ever good enough?
Am I good enough?
I fret that every syllable is insufficient,
subpar, unworthy.
Every sentence demands redoing;
every paragraph must be stripped bare
and reassembled.
I have failed my Mistress—
She punishes me
by lacing my thoughts with poison,
injecting shame into each firing neuron.

She owns me.

Pride is laid at Her feet
and burnt so that the smoke reaches Her nose
and then,
when all is laid out before Her
in a raw and vulnerable showing,
only then does She smile.
I have done it.
I have written the next page.

She is never sated.
Tomorrow, She will hunger again.
I must prepare for the ritual.

Details | Hanna Joyton Poem

Crumble

You always said you knew me so well;
better than I knew myself.
You'd tell me all about me:
what I wanted, how I felt.
I'd do just what you told me.
You'd say I sinned, so I confessed.
Because of course it's true—
it came from you,
and you always know best.

You always said you were protecting me,
sheltering me,
keeping me safe.
And I needed to be safe
it's true,
but that's not what you'd do.
I needed to be safe—
still do—
but I wasn't safe with you.

I was a child.
I didn't need to be strong,
I needed to be safe.
But that's not how the cookie crumbles,
not how you played the game.

Details | Hanna Joyton Poem

Growing Anger

The boy has a garden
of which he is proud.
It's a safe place for him
when the world is too loud.

In it he grows joy,
and fear
and laughter
and tears.

He waters lovely blue plants
(they remind him of songs)
and winding green plants
(they remind him of past wrongs).

In time, throughout the garden
grows a vine bright red.
One he never planted
yet grows there nonetheless.

This vine is Anger;
it started out as a seed,
and then it grew
and it grew
into a terrible weed.

It chokes his precious flowers
in the garden of his mind.
It demolishes and devours,
leaving nothing behind.

He grows to love the vine,
because it's all he has left
and anything is better
than emptiness.

Details | Hanna Joyton Poem

Not Really

I could write five million words about you
And all of them would be true
But none of it would be enough
Not really.
I could write five million poems about you
Sonnets, limericks, haikus
But none of it would be enough
Not really.
I could draw five million pictures about you
And with every single kind of color, too
But none of it would be enough
Not really.
I could write five million journal entries about you
And every single cute thing you do
But none of it would be enough
Not really.
None of it would be enough
To describe what it is I'm feeling.