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Jade Mcglynn Poem
It feels like a lock
Click
slamming shut on a door
I used to walk through without thinking.
Words
they pile up inside me.
Not gone.
Not lost.
Just trapped.
Like a river swelling
against a dam
that will not break.
My mouth is stone.
My body
heavy.
And every attempt to speak
is like running in a dream:
legs sinking,
distance endless,
the finish line
always just out of reach.
Inside, I am screaming.
Inside, I am whispering.
Inside,
I am still me.
But you can’t hear me.
Because the silence is thick.
Not empty, no.
Thick with frustration,
thick with shame,
thick with the ache
of wanting
so desperately wanting to be understood
without having to explain.
So don’t rush me.
Don’t push me.
Stay.
Wait with me
in the quiet.
Because this silence
is not absence.
It is survival.
It is my body saying:
enough.
And when I return
when my voice crawls back
know this:
I was never gone.
I was always here.
Behind the glass.
Behind the lock.
Still me.
Always me.
Copyright © Jade McGlynn | Year Posted 2025
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Jade Mcglynn Poem
I am not a flame that flickers out
I am a sun that collapses inward,
heavy with gravity,
pulling every ounce of myself into silence.
They call it burnout
like it’s a candle stub,
like it’s a thing you recover from with rest and coffee and maybe a nap.
But this—
this is tectonic.
This is my neurons saying enough.
This is language turning into smoke in my throat,
every sound a stone I cannot lift.
Imagine running a marathon every day on a track made of neon lights,
sirens, stares,
unwritten rules you’re expected to know
smile at the right time,
make your body easy,
make your voice normal,
make your difference invisible.
You keep running.
You keep running.
And one day your legs forget how to move.
I used to think burnout meant weakness.
That if I was stronger,
I could carry the world’s noise without dropping it.
But now I see
it is not weakness to stop.
It is survival to shut down.
In burnout, I am raw.
Skin a live wire,
brain a tangled forest where words hide like frightened animals.
I am not gone.
I am conserving.
I am cocooning in silence,
waiting for the world to stop scraping me
like sandpaper.
And when I return,
because I do return,
I will not be the same.
Parts of me shed like snakeskin,
others tougher,
others softer.
Burnout is not failure.
It is the body’s rebellion.
It is truth spoken through collapse.
So if you see me quiet,
see me still,
do not call it laziness.
Do not call it defeat.
Call it what it is
a fire pulling inward,
a sun protecting its core.
Burnout is not the end.
It is the body saying:
enough pretending,
enough performing,
enough.
And maybe
maybe enough
can finally be
Enough
Copyright © Jade McGlynn | Year Posted 2025
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Jade Mcglynn Poem
Autism
people dress it up with pretty words.
Unique. Gifted. Special.
But they don’t see me when the world is crushing in,
when sound drills holes in my skull,
when light burns my skin
like fire I can’t escape.
They don’t see me
when my body stops moving,
when my voice packs its bags and leaves,
when I am trapped inside silence
a prisoner in my own head.
They don’t see the shame.
The way I beg myself,
just speak, just act normal,
but nothing comes.
And the room fills with stares,
and the air fills with weight,
and I shrink smaller,
smaller,
until I feel like nothing at all.
This is the part they don’t talk about.
The loneliness.
The exhaustion.
The way every day feels like walking through a world not built for me.
A world too bright,
too fast,
too loud,
and I am always too much,
and never enough.
And it hurts.
To know you are here
alive,
thinking,
feeling
and yet unseen.
Unheard.
Unreachable.
So if you want to know autism,
don’t just take the glitter,
don’t just take the slogans.
Take this too.
This raw, aching silence.
This burning skin.
This endless fight to exist in a body and a world that do not meet.
Because sometimes
autism feels like drowning.
And I am just begging for someone to notice that I’m still breathing.
But I am.
I am still breathing.
And every breath I take is a rebellion.
Every quiet return from the storm is proof that I am stronger than the world that tries to swallow me whole.
I am here.
Even in the silence.
Even in the breaking.
Even in the weight.
I am here.
Copyright © Jade McGlynn | Year Posted 2025
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Jade Mcglynn Poem
You were there when the dark
crept loud through the door,
when my tears made small rivers
that stained to your core.
You never once left me,
you never once frowned,
you just held my silence
till sleep came around.
Your fur is all matted,
your seams pulled apart,
but I know every thread
is stitched into my heart.
Others see fabric,
old stuffing, worn eyes
but they don’t see the love
that your silence implies.
I’ve told you my secrets,
the ones I can’t say,
and you guard them so tightly
they won’t slip away.
You’re my courage, my anchor,
my shield, my safe place,
the first thing I reach for
when life feels unsafe.
One day they will tell me,
“You’re older—move on.”
But you’ll never be gone, Bear,
you’ll never be gone.
Even if I outgrow you,
and tuck you away,
you’ll live in the child
who still needs you each day.
So I’ll whisper a promise
to your threadbare old ear:
wherever I wander,
I’ll keep you near.
For you’re more than soft fabric,
more than my toy
you’re the keeper of childhood,
my comfort, my joy
Copyright © Jade McGlynn | Year Posted 2025
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Jade Mcglynn Poem
They say there’s a light at the end of the tunnel,
but nobody tells you how long the tunnel is.
Nobody warns you that sometimes it feels like you’re walking blindfolded
through stone,
hands out,
scraping your palms raw on walls that do not answer back.
The dark whispers things.
It tells you: this is forever.
It tells you: you are buried, not traveling.
And you almost believe it
because the dark is convincing.
The dark is patient.
The dark knows your name.
But then,
a thread.
So small you almost think it’s a trick.
A pinprick glow,
so far away it could be a star,
or a memory,
or a lie you once heard.
And yet,
your body leans toward it.
Every cell aching for the warmth.
Every scar humming: move.
Step by step,
you start again.
Not because the dark is gone,
but because the light is real.
And the closer you get,
the more it grows
from pinprick to lantern,
from lantern to sunrise,
from sunrise to flood.
Until it is not a light at the end of the tunnel.
It is the tunnel collapsing,
walls crumbling,
roof shattering into sky.
It is your lungs learning again
how to be full.
It is your heartbeat
not just surviving
but drumming.
A rhythm.
A declaration.
The light at the end of the tunnel was never waiting for you.
It was carried in your chest
the whole time.
Every stumble,
every crawl,
every almost-giving-up,
it was there,
a match unstruck,
a dawn unborn.
And now
you are the light.
You are the fire that the dark could not keep.
You are proof that tunnels end.
Copyright © Jade McGlynn | Year Posted 2025
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