Poeaxtry's Poetry Prism

Spell. Stone. & Sparks that Ignite Change

Tag: letting go

  • Four Years Without Her: Grief, Growth, and Letting Go

    Four Years Without Her: Grief, Growth, and Letting Go

    Four years

    November 8th marks four years since I lost my mom. Four years since everything I knew broke open and the world is still shifting in ways I still can’t fully name. Grief isn’t a straight road, it’s a labyrinth. It’s a mess and a maze all at the same time. Some days I walk through it calmly, breathing deep, grateful to have survived another turn. Hiking through places I knew my mother would love breathing in crisp air and I know then I can feel her there. Other days, I slam into walls made of memories, and I ache like it just happened yesterday.

    People say time heals, but it doesn’t, not even slightly. Time teaches, especially how to fake it. It also teaches how to carry the weight differently. Some mornings I can laugh, work, create, and feel almost whole. Other mornings I stare at the ceiling and think about the space she left, a space that no one else could ever fill.

    I’ve kept working through all of it. I’ve kept building my life piece by piece, even when it felt like holding everything together with shaking hands. I built this business for her, for the strength she gave me, for the words she never got to read. I’ve published my own work many times now, and I’ve even been published by others. Every success feels like a conversation I wish I could have with her. “Mom, look. I did it.”

    There are so many things she’s missed.

    The late-night laughs. The healing. The slow, quiet days when I finally felt peace again. She hasn’t seen my sisters growing up into young women… strong, funny, and fierce in ways that remind me of her. She hasn’t seen me learn to be happy again, to find joy without guilt. She hasn’t seen the forgiveness that never came from others, but still bloomed in me.

    And then there’s my dad. That’s a different kind of grief, the kind you choose. I finally cut him off, and though it hurt, it was necessary. You can’t heal in the same place you were broken. That decision came from love. A love for myself, and for the memory of the woman who taught me what love should feel like.

    There’s a hole where she was, and nothing fills it. I’ve stopped trying to. I’ve learned to build around it instead. And while I try to let light pour through it sometimes. It is hard to honor it on the dark days. Grief isn’t something you get over. It’s something you grow around.

    Four years without her feels impossible, and yet I’m still here. Still writing. Still working. Still remembering.

    Because she never left entirely. She just changed forms. She’s in every poem, every stone I pick up, and every person I help heal through my work.

    Grief changes shape, but it never disappears. It becomes part of your story. And if you let it, it can become the fire that keeps you creating, surviving, and loving through the loss.

    Here’s to four years of missing her, and four years of finding myself again in the space she left behind.

    Poeaxtry Links kofi portfolio

  • “Anti-Depressants” Grief, My Mother, and the Limits of Healing

    “Anti-Depressants” Grief, My Mother, and the Limits of Healing

    Grief has a way of showing up right when the world is shouting about holiday cheer. Every neon display tells you to be merry. Every commercial insists that joy is mandatory. It hits harder when your heart is carrying loss. This poem confronts that tension directly. It’s the kind where love and pain sit in the same room. You find yourself trying to breathe through both. Readers who have carried a loss through the holiday season will recognize that raw pull. Those who have tried to balance healing with real life will also feel it. In a world that doesn’t slow down, this piece reminds you that grief doesn’t follow the calendar. It follows the heart, step by step, memory by memory.

    “Happy fucking holiday.”

    An original poem by: Axton N.O. Mitchell

    I’m depressed,

    and my life isn’t even a mess

    compared to what it used to be.

    Recently, I learned:

    grief isn’t something

    medication will ever ease.

    You
    have
    to
    let
    it

    drop you to your knees.


    The pills really do work

    for what they’re worth.

    But I still have to get used

    to the loss of you.

    And now your dog is gone too.

    She held so many memories
    of you:

    the way you put her in your purse,

    the way you two were attached.

    The way she looked
    at me
    like she knew
    she’d be with you.

    Letting
    go

    has never come easy to me.

    I don’t think

    I’ll ever fully heal

    the loss of
    you.

    Maybe I can’t…

    If it’s true

    medicine for depression

    can’t touch

    what grief has caused.

    Now what will

    carry me
    through

    the loss of
    you?

    This one came out of the type of day when everything felt too close. I kept thinking about how healing never looks like what people promise. Folks hand out easy lines. They say time heals everything, or that pills fix the hurt. However, they never sit with what grief really does. Losing someone shifts the ground under you, and sometimes the memories that stay behind hit just as hard. Even the dog carried pieces of that story. Writing this was my way to accept the truth. Medicine can soften the edges, but it can’t erase the shape of a loss. It felt important to say it out loud. If someone out there needs that same permission to feel what they feel, I hope this poem offers them comfort. This poem can give them space to breathe.

    Grief asks us to carry the weight of love long after someone is gone. It shows up in the soft places, the unexpected reminders, the empty corners where laughter used to live. This poem is part of a larger journey through healing and memory. It explores the fragile work of moving forward even when the heart refuses to forget. If this piece met you where you are today, stay with that feeling. Let it be a reminder that your grief is real, and your healing is real. You don’t have to rush toward some polished version of recovery. You’re allowed to take it slow. You’re allowed to remember. You’re allowed to feel all of it… especially on the days when the world tells you to smile.

    Poeaxtrys Links. Poetizer. A poem.


  • The world took you. And They Took Her From Me Too

    The world took you. And They Took Her From Me Too

    It’s been almost four years since my mom died

    Four years this November as always 8 days before my birthday.

    And Wednesday

    I finally got to see her dog again.

    The last living pet my mom had left.

    The last heartbeat in this world that still carried her by choice and not birth.

    The only one who remembered both of us and my sisters.

    The only one left who still held my mom’s scent, her rhythm, her quiet love. The reason it was so easy to decide to bring mom home. Jewel. She was my sibling too.

    I hadn’t seen her since the day we lost my mom

    Not once. She stole mom’s favorite blanket and my mom’s husband stole my ability to see her basically in unity.

    Because a man that knew the dog 3 years and was married to my mom the same wouldn’t let me come around. As if he loved them all the entire time I did.

    And after he died

    My sister took her thankfully.

    Sadly her pos excuse for a ex boyfriend wouldn’t let me come around

    He was abusing my sister. It’s no secret. The public charges aired that out.

    So everything in her world became locked down, closed off, unreachable by his choice

    I was shut out

    While the last piece of my mom grew older and slower without me

    While I sat in that absence

    Hurting

    Helpless

    Then earlier this week I hear she’s sick, and by Wednesday my sister is putting her down. It felt like the next time I turned around. So I went and saw her, my sister was able to secure the vet the next day to by us time.

    One final time and we know that isn’t ever really enough time to say good bye.

    I gave her a big meal from Wendy’s, nuggets, burgers, and ice cream.

    I told her she was good

    I told her I loved her

    I held her. I told her she got to see mom first and I was jealous. I told her about all the pets before her and family she’d get too great. I couldn’t stop telling her that mom would be there soon.

    I know she knew that we were up to something.

    Then today

    My sister took her to the vet

    She was put to sleep

    And cremated

    And now she’s gone too.

    This is grief that burns

    Grief that screams

    Grief that doesn’t just cry over what happened

    But over everything that didn’t

    Everything I never got to do

    All the years I could have been beside her

    All the comfort we could have shared in missing the same person

    The same lap

    The same voice

    I didn’t just lose her

    I was kept from her

    And then I lost her anyway.

    She didn’t just die

    She was taken from me long before today

    And then taken again.

    I’m so fucking tired of things being stolen from me.

    She was more than a dog

    She was the last piece of my mother I could touch that Isn’t a human.

    The last one who knew the way home used to smell.

    The last little soul who got to grieve my mom with me finally returning to her. But I wasn’t ready.

    Rest easy, sweet girl

    I hope you’re curled up with her again.

    I hope you both know I never stopped loving either of you

    Tell her I’m still here

    Still hurting

    Still trying

    Still loving

    I am little lighter knowing mom has jewel. I know she has been watching and waiting for her jewely whoolie to come home across the rainbow bridge the last of her fur kids,

    Links poem

  • Ash in My Hair, Smoke in My Bones

    Ash in My Hair, Smoke in My Bones

    The fire still smells like cedar and clove. With bay leaves and memory. Like endings.

    Ritual Fires

    At midnight, I threw myself to the flames. No, not all of me, just the parts I no longer want to keep. I wrote the things I’m letting go of on torn paper and fed them to the fire like offerings. I carved hope into bay leaves and whispered every dream I’m not ready to give up on. I mixed herbs and bark for Litha. Both for letting go and for inviting in. And then I burned it all.

    It wasn’t neat.

    It never is.

    But it was honest.

    I burned what I’ve outgrown, again even if I already wrote about it two days ago.

    I burned shame I inherited.

    I burned the way I still try to shrink when I take up too much space.

    I burned the ghost of who I thought I had to be to earn love.

    I let the smoke wrap around me like a truth spell or a reminder. I’m not starting over. I’m continuing. And I needed that fire to mark the shift. This isn’t a ritual I’ll explain in exact terms. It’s just something I needed.

    A fire.

    A night.

    A line drawn in smoke. Now there’s ash in my hair. Smoke in my bones. And more space than there was before.

    I’ll plant something in it. Not now. But soon.

    Links

  • The Longest Day, The Quietest Moment

    The Longest Day, The Quietest Moment

    Solstice

    There’s something ironic about the Solstice being the brightest, longest day of the year. All that sunlight and somehow, my most important truths came in the quiet. Not in the light. Not in celebration. Not even in ritual. Just in the soft, calm knowing that came after decades of waiting.

    I used to wait on the porch every other weekend, little backpack packed. Notebooks and a toothbrush. Maybe a toy I’d bring with me to his place. Except he never came. Or well to be honest he usually didn’t come. He came sometimes. It was as if he’d appear once in a blue moon. He seemed to come when he thought my hope would shrivel and I would stop waiting if he didn’t.

    That was the pattern.

    Calls full of promises.

    Nothing to follow through.

    Excuses. Delays. Silence.

    Years of silence. With minimal visits a year even if he scheduled them all.

    Still Child Me Waited & Waited

    But I still waited, every other weekend like clockwork. It became part of my rhythm, part of the structure that shaped me. I didn’t realize until recently that I’d started seeing everyone through that same lens. I treated every new connection like it was just another promise waiting to be broken. Another porch. Another weekend. Another packed bag that never got carried to the car.

    But Lately

    It’s only lately, maybe in this strange stillness, that I’ve realized not everyone is him. Not every missed message is abandonment. Not every “I’m here for you” is a lie.

    Some people stay. Some people show up. Some people are not him.

    And I’ve stood by my no contact boundary. For 2 years now mostly. That was not easy. There’s guilt in that kind of distance. But there’s also peace. And maybe peace is the true Solstice gift. It’s the kind that comes from holding your own sunlight instead of chasing scraps of someone else’s.

    Two years ago, he commented on something I’d posted about my mom. He acted like he was still a presence. It seemed like he had any place in my life or my grief. This man doesn’t even know my birthday. My address. Where I live. Who I am. He knows a version of me that’s long dead. The child on the porch. Not the person I am now.

    Should Have Just Stayed No Contact

    So I messaged him.

    The message was long, so long you had to click to expand it in iMessages. I told him the truth. I laid it out. The damage. The broken trust. The years of absence. How his words mean nothing anymore because he never once followed through. I wasn’t cruel, just honest. Direct. Clear.

    He replied with a single period.

    Just a dot.

    Like all that truth didn’t even deserve words.

    A year later, I tried again. Softer this time. Not because I thought it would change anything, but because I needed to release it from me. I needed to say that this wasn’t my job to fix. That I was the child. That I had done enough.

    Another long message. Another scroll.

    He replied with a thumbs up.

    That was it.

    And somehow, those two hollow responses made everything quieter. Like, finally quiet. Not the kind of quiet you sit in while waiting . The kind that comes when you stop waiting. When you stop leaving the porch light on. When you let the bag go unpacked. When you choose to stop hoping for something you know won’t ever come.

    That was my Solstice.

    Not a ritual. Not a hike. Not a spell.

    Just a quiet knowing:

    He is who he is.

    And I am no longer the child waiting for him to change.

    I may share those messages someday. This is not to expose him. It is to show what emotional closure looks like when it’s one-sided. What it means to hold truth when no one ever mirrors it back. What it means to free yourself from the trap of obligation and choose healing instead.

    The sun is highest now.

    And I’ve never felt more clear.

    links Wattpad Ko-Fi

  • What I’ve Outgrown: Shadow Work Reflections on Friendship and Healing

    What I’ve Outgrown: Shadow Work Reflections on Friendship and Healing

    I was His best friend He was NOT Mine!

    I’ve outgrown my adult best friend. The boy I became a man with. The boy who made it feel like I wasn’t alone in a place where nobody felt like me. For years he was the only mirror I had. The only person who got it. Honestly, I’ve been outgrowing him slowly, painfully, one splinter at a time. I didn’t know how to let go. Not until the rope cut so deep I practically sliced my fingers off just trying to hold on. Now there’s no grip left. Just skin and scar. space and peace. I don’t hate him. Which is usually how I let go when my love turns to hate. I just no longer wish to participate in his delusions or fantasies.

    Addiction

    I’ve also outgrown habitual drug use. Or really, drugs in general. At least the illicit kind. I still like my plants: weed, nicotine, caffeine. Those feel more natural to me. Oh, and mushrooms. Can’t forget the little mushroom dudes. Sometimes they’ve taught me more than any therapist ever did. But the rest of it? That chasing? That hole-filling impulse? That’s gone.

    Toxicity

    I’ve outgrown toxic patterns. The ones I clung to because they felt like home, mostly outgrown. I mean chaos was the language I was taught love in. I grew up watching relationships rot from the inside out and thought that must be what connection looks like. So I repeated it. Over and over. Until I didn’t. I still have my self-sabotaging hiccups but no one is perfect.

    Clothes

    I’ve outgrown my clothes. Literally. I dropped over 60 pounds this year. I had told myself I’d do it as my resolution. For once, I didn’t break that promise. My body feels different now. My skin holds me differently. My knees don’t hurt on hikes as quick for sure.

    Allowing Myself to Wallow

    And maybe the biggest thing? I’ve outgrown the lie that my depression controls everything. Some days, yeah, it wins. But other days, a lot of days, it’s a choice. Not to be sick, but to sit in it. To fester in the filth instead of fighting. I’ve started calling myself out on it. Started crawling out of bed even when I don’t want to. Started facing the rot before it spreads. Because healing is choosing again and again not to let the dark devour you whole. If there’s no light in my line of sight I have learned to become the light.

    Support the work that feeds, steadies, and teaches! Consider a donation via CashApp, PayPal, Ko-Fi, or Buy Me a Coffee. This will keep the projects and community alive.

    Links Form for Free Digital Collections for Honest Reviews