Words that Cut

I opened an old notebook, pages yellowed with age,

filled with dreams, half-formed, breaths caught in ink,

but one line, etched sharply, ruins it all,

a teacher’s words, each a jagged stone, cruelly placed.

‘You’ll never make it,’ they said, with a grin,

as if my heart were a paper toy in their hands,

swirled into shadows where my passion once shined,

now, it bleeds softly, ink staining memory.

The dent in that paper, a reminder of loss,

is where hope once nested, cozy and warm,

yet here I sit, in the silence of after, feeling,

as if I’m still running from words that never fade.