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Best Poems Written by Holly-Marie Winterburn

Below are the all-time best Holly-Marie Winterburn poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Holly-Marie Winterburn Poem

The cages we inherit

The songbird sings because she must,
her voice a trembling act of trust.
Her wings press tight to iron bars,
a cage that steals her sky and stars.
She remembers how the wild winds felt —
a freedom stolen, not dispelled.
For memory’s echo, soft and slight,
can hollow even morning’s light.

The bear still paces, slow and worn,
a creature grown from grief and scorn.
Step, turn, step back — the silent plea
of something trapped that should be free.
Even asleep she feels the walls
closing like hands in quiet thralls.
Some beasts grow huge, some merely break;
both suffer for the captor’s sake.

The snake lies coiled, her spine confined,
a tightness clinging to her mind.
She sheds old skin in layered grief,
but finds in each no true relief.
What’s left behind upon the floor
still haunts the shape she takes once more.
For pain, once worn, will often stay
no matter how she fades away.

The wolf stares out through latticed wire,
a ghost of dusk, of wild desire.
Her eyes should mirror nights unbound,
but now reflect the fenced-in ground.
She growls at shadows of her past —
the forests lost, the futures cast.
The world she knew has slipped from call,
and left her here, inside a stall.

And then —
there is me, caught just the same.

I am the bird denied the sky,
the bear who walks though she would fly,
the snake who sheds but still holds pain,
the wolf who mourns what won’t return again.

My bars are memories, sharp and thin,
built from the ache beneath my skin.
I breathe, the walls breathe back at me —
a quiet kind of misery.

And so I whisper, soft and true:
I know your cage.
I wear it too.

Details | Holly-Marie Winterburn Poem

To feel nothing

Your touch still lives in my skin,
a sickness that hums beneath every breath.
I hate it —
the way it crawls back,
the way my body remembers
when my mind screams no.

Sometimes the noise inside is too loud,
and I do small, desperate things
to quiet it.
I chase a different kind of ache,
one I can control —
a pain that belongs to me.

It never lasts.
The silence breaks again,
and I’m left shaking,
hollow,
counting the seconds
until the ghosts fade.

If I could tear out the memory, I would.
If I could wash off the feeling of you,
I’d drown it in light.
But it clings,
and I keep breathing through the sickness,
waiting for the world
to finally go quiet.

Details | Holly-Marie Winterburn Poem

Embrace the void

They told me emptiness was hunger,
a room stripped bare of light,
but I have stood in silence long enough
to hear the stars breathe at night.

There is a strange peace
in becoming unseen—
like ink dissolving into water,
like winter swallowing green.

I used to fear the hollow spaces,
the pauses between heartbeats,
until I learnt even the universe
is built from absences it keeps.

So if the dark reaches for my hand,
I will not be destroyed.
I will loosen my grip on everything
and embrace the void

Details | Holly-Marie Winterburn Poem

What you turned me into

You didn’t hurt me loudly.
You trained me quietly.

You taught me that care meant sacrifice,
that loyalty meant shrinking,
that healing myself
was selfish if you felt lonely.

So I bent.
I paused my life for yours.
I learned how to disappear politely.

And I thought that was friendship.

Until someone else finally said
what my bones already knew:
love isn’t supposed to feel
like a cage with a smile on it.

When I told you,
you didn’t listen —
you panicked.
You wrapped fear around your words
and made me responsible for holding you together.

That’s when something in me snapped.

Because care is not control.
And pain is not a weapon.

The next day you laughed,
like nothing cracked.
Like you hadn’t shaken my world
and called it concern.

So I chose distance.
Not cruelty —
distance.

And you called it betrayal.

Now my name moves without me.
You carve it into stories I never lived.
You take my silence
and sell it as guilt.
You take my honesty
and bend it into threat.

You poison rooms I’m not even in.

And the worst part isn’t losing you.
It’s watching someone I love
start to search my face
for damage that isn’t there.

It’s being untrusted
because someone else is afraid
to be seen clearly.

You say I replaced you.
But really —
I just stopped vanishing for you.

I am angry.
Not loud.
Not cruel.
Just tired of bleeding quietly
for people who call it loyalty.

I didn’t leave to hurt anyone.
I left because staying
was teaching me
how to disappear.

And I refuse
to become a ghost
just to keep someone else comfortable.

Details | Holly-Marie Winterburn Poem

Borrowed Bliss

The kettle sings, the windows rain,
the evening folds around the pane,
And I can slowly let go of my shame. 
I curl beneath my fraying throw
and leave the world I used to know.

Through forests deep with silver fae,
where dragons scorch the skies to grey,
And ancient beings begin to decay,
where elven voices rise like streams
and pull me softly through my dreams.

The house grows quiet, dim, and small,
Mum’s footsteps fading down the hall,
yet kingdoms bloom beyond my wall.
A lamp becomes a lantern’s light,
my blanket armour for the night.

For stories stitch what life unwinds,
they calm the storms inside our minds,
And quiet strength within us binds. 
And though the world feels hard to miss,
I find my peace in borrowed bliss.

Details | Holly-Marie Winterburn Poem

Fine

I think the worst part
is that none of it looks big enough
to explain why I feel like this.

No one points and says,
“that’s where it went wrong.”

It’s just small things—
over and over
until they aren’t small anymore.

My dad has another family now.
I say it like it’s normal,
like it doesn’t sit heavy in my mouth.

He has new kids,
a new life,
and I don’t know where I fit in it.

I don’t think he forgot me on purpose.
I think I just… stopped being included.

And somehow that hurts more.

Because it means
I was easy to leave behind.

And at home
I tell myself it’s fine too—

even when my chest tightens
every time Mum’s voice changes,
even when I replay what I said
trying to figure out
what I did wrong this time.

It’s always small things.

A tone.
A look.
A question I shouldn’t have asked.

And suddenly I’m standing there
feeling about five years old,
trying to fix something
I don’t understand how I broke.

She laughs with them—
my siblings—
like it’s easy.

Like love isn’t something
you have to be careful around.

With me, it feels like
I’m always one step away
from getting it wrong.

So I stopped saying things.
Stopped reacting.
Stopped needing.

Because it’s easier
to be quiet
than to be too much.

And for so long
I called that strength.

I called it fine.

But today
when I said it out loud,

it didn’t sound true.

It sounded like
something I’d repeated so many times
I forgot to check
if I meant it.

Because if it was fine,
why do I feel this ache
in places I can’t explain?

Why do I feel like
I don’t fully belong
anywhere I’m supposed to?

I think I learned
how to live with it
before I learned
how to question it.

And now I am—

and it hurts more
than pretending ever did.

Details | Holly-Marie Winterburn Poem

The weight of quiet

The dark doesn’t rush me.
It waits.
Like a room that knows
I won’t leave soon.

I sit with my back to the wall,
counting the cracks,
learning their shapes,
pretending they don’t spell my name.
Silence presses in —
not loud,
just close.

Pain settles where comfort should be,
a dull, familiar ache.
It doesn’t shout; it repeats,
tapping once, then twice,
until my thoughts lose their beat.

I am alone in crowded spaces,
lost where I should belong.
Everyone speaks in straight lines
while my mind bends wrong.

I keep secrets folded in my chest,
creased from being held too long.
Some truths rot when they’re hidden,
some grow teeth when they’re gone.

The walls remember everything
I try to forget.
They echo old moments back at me,
collecting my debt.

I breathe —
the dark breathes back.
A quiet rhyme,
a mirrored fact.

There are nights when I feel
too heavy to disappear,
too broken to stay,
caught between then and here.

If I could name this feeling,
I think it would be trapped —
not tied, not bound,
just unable to step back.

So I sit with the quiet,
let it settle, let it stay.
Because leaving feels impossible,
and surviving feels the same way.

Details | Holly-Marie Winterburn Poem

Ode to Oreo

O Oreo, thief of rustling packets,
how do you always find the treats?
You pull open drawers in the dead of night
like a burglar wrapped in black and white fur.

You leave ripped catnip bags across the floor
as if destruction is a kind of art.
The dog growls when you pass,
but you only flick your tail and carry on.

Every cat in the street knows you somehow.
You meet them beneath garden fences,
touch noses like you’ve shared lives before.

And maybe that is why I love you so fiercely.
Because before you, there were others.
Four names I still carry quietly.
Three boys lost to the road,
one girl stolen by poison.

You are chaos, Oreo,
all sharp claws and crooked habits,
yet you curl against me at night
like something determined to heal what it never broke.

Best Poems Written by Holly-Marie Winterburn

The cages we inherit

To feel nothing

Embrace the void

What you turned me into

Borrowed Bliss

Fine

The weight of quiet

Ode to Oreo

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