The Coal Among Diamonds (2025)

Please see me once, 

from a different side.

Oh, see how much I long

for someone to stay, not hide.

Am I so broken they turn away,

a handshake where a hug should be?

A stone-cold drug numbs my day,

but never my heart’s plea.

I am not where I wish to stand,

my dreams feel far, my grip unsure.

Still, my heart holds out its hand,

aching for love and something pure.

I am sad, and sad again,

a storm that never fades.

And if I share this quiet pain,

they’ll call it ungrateful shades.

All I see around me

are people who found their other half,

while I rot away in my own debris,

and laugh to hide my aftermath.

I have made mistakes and lost my way;

There is so much wrong inside of me.

But I just hoped someone might stay,

and see a right I cannot see.

This pain, these strings it pulls,

they choke, they twist, they bruise.

I dream of leaving it all behind,

of shedding this heavy ruse.

I failed myself, I failed my friends,

I failed my family and “what could have been.”

Now I sit in this cold, dark room,

with nothing but the sound of my sins.

Here I sit with worry and sadness,

I cry for a future I’ll never see.

I cry for wanting something more,

for wanting someone to love me.

My envy grows, my colours fade,

the grey inside me starts to sway.

I wish the snow would gently fall

and wash this broken man away.

There was someone I once liked,

but I never spoke, I never tried.

Now love feels like a ghostly ache,

a wound that never dried.

I am a lonely, useless fool,  I know.

This poem bleeds the pain I sow.

It reeks of greed, regret, and need, 

But my heart can’t lie; it has to bleed.

And if they ever look my way,

in this world of shimmering gems and glass,

they’ll see the coal that couldn’t stay, 

a dull black stone that love bypassed.

You can polish me, break me, grind me thin,

But I will never sparkle like them again.

For I am the coal in a bag of diamonds, 

too dark to shine, too soft to win.