Home » Poems » Best » Shay's Archive » Best Shay's Archive Poems

Best Poems Written by Shay's Archive

Below are the all-time best Shay's Archive poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Shay's Archive Poem

The Manifesto I've Dreaded To Write

I’m sorry I never fit inside the rooms you gave me.
The walls bent inward,
doors swelled shut,
and I mistook silence for safety.

I’m sorry —
I’m sorry for every quiet collapse you never saw,
for the teeth I swallowed instead of words,
for becoming a stranger in the house you built.

I’m sorry —
I’m sorry for leaving them in the dark,
for the sharp edges I handed them as toys,
for not learning softness soon enough.

I’m sorry —
I’m sorry for being her doubted light,
for suspecting every kindness, as undeserved as may be,
for ever thinking her hands could be knives
when they only ever stitched me back together.
At least you have the leather cut by my own unsteady hands,
and the thread pulled through skin and paper.
Every seam knows my fingerprints,
every sheet carries the tremor of being chosen.
Your words fall into them
like rain into cupped palms —
I hold them,
ink-wet and breathing,
long after you’ve left the room.

I’m sorry for the mirrors I broke on purpose,
so I wouldn’t have to see the face
I already hated.

I’m sorry for the jars I hid underground —
breaths I never let go of,
fragments of days I left unlived,
songs I hummed only to the dark.

I’m sorry I never knew how to hold quiet without smothering it.

I’m sorry I never knew how to hold noise without flinching.

I’m sorry for every time I confused love with survival.
For staying in wreckage,
because leaving felt worse than burning.

I’m sorry I called myself stupid before anyone else could.
I’m sorry I rehearsed unworthiness so often
it became a prayer.

I’m sorry for falling in love with character,
for clutching uniqueness like a life raft,
for mistaking rescue for belonging.

I’m sorry for the softness that terrifies me —
for flinching at gentle hands,
because storms were the only language I learned.

I’m sorry for being unreasonable,
for knowing it,
and still not knowing how to stop.

I’m sorry for every apology
that feels like an exit.
I’m sorry for how often
I’ve written my own ending in my head.

I’m sorry this sounds like goodbye.

Details | Shay's Archive Poem

Either I've Seen You Or I Want To, How Could I Be Mad At That?

The horizon is a blade—
it glints whether I run toward it
or watch it withdraw.
Each dawn splits me open,
spilling a slow trickle of salt,
as if the sea is feeding me to itself,
one grain at a time.

I know the undertow’s handwriting—
it pulls not to drown,
but to measure how far my lungs will stretch.
Even in absence,
the shore presses its ghost lips
to the soles of my feet,
branding me with wet fire.

The days arrive like heavy-winged birds,
falling or flying—it makes no difference.
Either I am lifted
or I am stitched to the air by wanting.
Both keep me in motion.

So tell me—
how could I curse the water
when even the ebb feels like an arrival,
and every hunger it leaves behind
is proof my compass still works?

Details | Shay's Archive Poem

The Hardest Thing To Accept Is Being Understood

The jars were meant to confuse even me —
labels scrawled backward,
dates falsified,
contents misnamed to keep them harmless.

I stacked them like decoys —
rows of false feelings,
the real ones buried deeper,
sealed in wax no hand could open.

Years I have walked these shelves blind,
touching glass like a stranger in my own skin;
aware of the weight,
but never sure what it held.

Then you came —
not breaking, not judging —
turning the right ones over in silence,
as if you always knew
where I’d hidden the truest rot.

I want to shout liar,
fraud,
to call your kindness a trick —
because what sense can there be
in understanding what is senseless?

But you lift a jar I thought unopenable,
hold it to the light;
and even I can see through it.
A clarity I never asked for,
yet cannot deny —
painful, precise,
like waking from sleep in a burning room.

I built these shelves crooked on purpose,
so even I would lose my way,
so even I could not find the one jar
with my true name scrawled under the lid.

Years, I walked these tunnels blind —
aware of the weight of glass,
but never knowing its contents.
I am foreign even to myself:
the way I think bends like warped wood,
splintering under every step.

A painful clarity —
like waking to sunlight on burned skin,
like discovering the wound
was always mine to tend.

Now the jars sing at night —
not mournful, but bright,
a low hum rising through floorboards.
The shelves tremble with it;
the dust learns joy.

I am afraid to join them —
afraid this understanding is borrowed,
that one day she will set the jars down
and leave the cellar quiet again.

Details | Shay's Archive Poem

I Go To Seek A Great Perhaps, as That Is What I Was After Too

The days crack like porcelain
under the heel of my wanting.
I am a spine of restless birds,
feathers slick with salt and early light—
my mouth tasting the metal
of doors I have not opened.

They ask me why.
Why walk without a destination?
Why carry a compass
if you don’t believe in north?

I tell them—
the road does not need an ending
to be worth taking.
Some skies are meant to be looked at,
not arrived under.

I keep moving
because stillness feels like rust,
and the wind has a way
of remembering my name.

The Great Perhaps is not a prize—
it’s the taste of rain
before the cloud bursts,
the echo that lingers
longer than the voice.

If you need a goal,
call this my goal:
to know how a streetlamp hums at early morning,
to count the freckles on a stranger’s knuckles,
to find out if the moon
is the same shade of bone in every city.

I have no anchor,
only her pulse like a lantern in my palm.
We are marrow and tinder,
always burning toward a horizon
that refuses to hold still—
and I love her for it.

Details | Shay's Archive Poem

I Am The Blueprint of My Own Quiet Ruin

The door swells in its frame each winter,
paint curling like old tongues —
still you press it open with a finger,
leaving soft dents in the wood.

Inside, the walls hum from hidden wires;
plaster sighs under your barefoot weight.
Every step — a loosened nail,
a whisper of dust sliding down beams.

The windows breathe in drafts,
their single panes shivering;
no storm need rage —
your shadow is enough to rattle them.

In the hallway, wallpaper blisters;
your sleeve grazes it,
and flakes of me snow to the floor.

The ceiling, swollen with damp,
droops lower each night you sleep here —
timbers ache above your breathing.

Downstairs, the kitchen faucet drips
like a clock without courage;
your laugh sends the pipes ringing,
and the cupboards cough up ghosts.

Upstairs, in the attic, silence nests —
you climb no ladder,
yet I feel your warmth seep into rafters
where rot waits, patient.

When you close the door behind you,
its frame leans inward, yearning.
The house is always colder after.

Details | Shay's Archive Poem

When We Shed Our Old Skin and Grow More Beautiful Than Ever

It clung like ivy, patient, green with hunger —
wrapped itself around every beam,
crept beneath shingles,
rooted in the cellar’s damp breath.

I mistook it for the house itself —
fed it rain, fed it dust,
let it climb my windows
and press its leaves to the glass
until I could no longer see daylight.

But rot loosens quietly.
One morning the vines lay slack,
detached in their own weight,
as if my silence was permission
for them to fall away.

Now the walls breathe unchoked,
bare brick catching sun like raw skin.
Floorboards sing with sudden emptiness.
The air is new — thin, sharp —
a future echoing through cleared rooms.

I walk barefoot through debris,
lighter than I have ever been.
For the first time
I do not flinch at my own footsteps.

Details | Shay's Archive Poem

My Admiration For A Hand-Woven Tapestry

Each thread hums —
drawn by patient hands,
dyed in storms and thaw.

The base is pale as morning frost,
fibers holding winter’s quiet breath.
Across it, ribbons of shifting hues
wind like rivers —
green bending to blue,
violet bruised into pink.

At the center, twin knots gleam —
changing under every flicker of light,
tidal glass or meadowstone,
never the same twice.

Edges fray softly,
not from neglect
but from touch repeated, cherished.
The whole cloth sways with a living pulse —
a work forever becoming,
never complete.