For dVerse Poets Pub – Where Lisa is our host for Open Link Night.
Hi! It is Lisa (aka Li) from Tao-Talk as your host this evening. Welcome once again to dVerse’ OpenLinkNight (OLN) Thursday, where you may link up ONE of your poems. Also included are a couple of OPTIONAL prompts that you may choose to inspire you. Hoping that you are enjoying your bit of space in the world. Despite chaos in its many forms around us, poetry has a way of giving us respite, in the writing, in the reading, and in the sharing of it.
OpenLinkNight #415
How Far We Have Come
I have measured life
in countries—
a childhood carried
from one shore to another,
languages settling in my mouth
before I understood
that belonging could have
more than one address.
I have measured it
in hands—
the small fingers of children
once curled around mine,
then suddenly grown,
holding children of their own.
In photographs
where everyone is younger.
In empty chairs.
In names I still say
although no one answers.
I have measured it
in kings—
one leaving this world
while I carried new life beneath my heart,
another leaving
when that child had long since grown.
And somewhere between them
I became older too.
Not old—
older.
There is a difference.
Age is not only
what time takes.
It is what time leaves:
the courage we did not know
we possessed,
the boundaries we finally learned
to draw,
the apologies we stopped making
for taking up space,
the dreams we buried,
and the impossible little dreams
that somehow survived us.
Once, I was taught
not to speak too much of myself.
Don’t be self-centred.
So I learned to make myself smaller,
as though my story took something
from somebody else’s.
It took me years to understand:
telling your story
does not silence mine,
and telling mine
does not silence yours.
Perhaps that is one gift
of having enough road behind us.
We can turn around.
We can see the places
where we stumbled,
where we stayed too long,
where someone carried us,
where we carried someone else.
And then we look ahead—
still unfinished,
still learning,
still becoming—
and realise the distance
was never measured
in years at all.
Look how far
we have come.
💜
https://www.blenza.com/linkies/links.php?owner=dversepoets&postid=05Sep2026a&meme=12507
My new song is out on all streaming platforms.
https://ditto.fm/silenced-but-not-broken
With love, coffee, poetry, and stardust,
— Maggie The Afterlove Voice 💫
If you want a reading, send me an email:
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