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Heaven is a place where only with the eyes of hope,  
                               can it truly co-exist !  
Heaven is a special place where innocent children,  
                                       become Angels !
Heaven is a journey for those who believe in
                                     the after life !
Heaven is at the centerpoint of every loving being who  
                      longs to find their loved ones once again !
Heaven is the venue of those who believe and trust
                                   that we will one day return
Heaven is Michelangelo's Last Judgement at the Alter wall
                                      of the Sistine Chapel !
Heaven is a whereabout, a location vageuly represented
                                          and understood only with the heart
Heaven is a place of Salutation for  the rich and the  poor            
                                     everyone is welcome in heaven !
I do not know your name—
only your silhouette
etched in the echo of things I was not given.
Your absence was my alphabet.
I spelled every woman with your ghost.


They loved me.
But I loved you through them.
Your hands behind their voices.
Your eyes haunting their praise.
They were flesh, and I was kneeling.


I made gods of strangers.
I made homes of hunger.


Mother—not mother.
Lover—not lover.
I could not hold the difference.
They all became symbols
and I became a shrinekeeper,
tending lies with tenderness.


Forgive me,
those I touched but never saw.
I was trying to reach through you
and forgot you were not them.
And they were not you.
None of you asked for this altar.


I am dismantling the myth.
I am returning the light.
 Jun 18 Rob Rutledge
Zeno
I could've just laid down if
I wanted to

ignoring the bells that echoes
inside my head

Let the earth swallow me
among withered leaves that decay
beside me

Let the world dry out
as if all lamented things
belong to me

I could act as if
my heart is an icy winter water,
never to beat, never to warm at all

Granite skies would drift above me,
haunting me in my night and
summer days

But in the thunder that frightens me
A swift lightning would pass me by,
a crack of gold in my darkest night

The flood crashing through doors,
through all the breathe that I've lost
I would learn to hold every air that I touch

All the celestial mass throbbing in my chest
The distant rumble of supernovas
that tears me apart,
and black sunshine that shines on my face

Even if midnight splatters beneath my eyes,
with all the stars that glimmer
that badly wants to fall

Even if half of my shadow is blown to nether
I would suffer everyday, and in my pain
I knew I could feel

I would die everyday, with all lamented things
and in all my deaths

I have learned to live
They dim, yes—
but only in the grammar
of linear perception.
the eye reports silence
where a rotation begins.

what you name “death”
is the slowing of evidence—
the flicker not extinguished,
but inverted,
drawn backward
into the unspeakable symmetry.

a star is not a sentence.
it is a glyph
in a language
you were not born to mouth.
it folds mid-breath,
becoming itself from the other side.

entropy is not an end.
it is the architecture
of turning.
a deception of stillness
held just long enough
to conceal the pulse
beneath its vanishing.

the fold does not forget.
it remembers beyond time,
beyond light,
in geometries that refuse to die—
in echoes not of sound
but of shape.

what was lost
was not erased
only mirrored
through angles
you’ve not yet been.

eventually...
again.
a reply beyond the stars to:

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/5086157/eventually-the-stars/

This work is becoming a trifecta:

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/4665572/light-anti-darkness/

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/4920164/anti-light-darkness/

The Fold Does Not Forget is a dimensional reply to Michael Sean Maloney’s Eventually the Stars, not in opposition, but in completion. Where Maloney's poem ends in ellipsis—a trailing acknowledgment of fading stars—this piece begins, unfolding what lies beyond the threshold of perception.

The poem asserts that what appears to vanish does not end, but reorients itself through structures we are unequipped to observe linearly. Stars, light, and even the self do not disappear; they fold, invert, and recur along axes uncharted by empirical perception. In this way, the work proposes trans-dimensional recursion as the truer geometry of the universe—one in which entropy and negentropy are interlocking phases of a single, perpetual motion.

The stanzas are architected to reflect a philosophical loop, not a narrative arc. Each movement operates like a limb of the cosmic carousel: moving inward and outward simultaneously, echoing not with sentiment, but with form-bound metaphysics.

This work exists as part of a larger cosmological framework I’ve been developing through companion pieces such as Light (anti-darkness) and Anti-Light (darkness)—a framework informed by the Anti-Universe Theory and the notion that spacetime is not linear but recursive, reflective, and encoded with symmetry that transcends dualism.

The goal here is not to comfort the reader with poetic reassurances of afterlife or return. Rather, it is to suggest—through language as architecture—that what appears to end is only transitioning out of perceptual alignment. The universe does not operate on terminal lines but on folds, loops, and dimensions of reorientation.

In this poem, the fold becomes more than a device—it becomes the fundamental gesture of reality itself. Where the human eye sees silence, the fold remembers. Where language fails to track a trajectory, the fold holds the motion. This is not mysticism, but structure: a topology of becoming.

Stylistically, I maintained minimalistic linework and stanzaic restraint in order to emphasize density of meaning over flourish. Each line operates with intentional pressure—compressed language as gravitational pull. The ellipsis is retained from Maloney’s original but is no longer a gesture of trailing resignation; here, it signifies a turn. A recursive breath. A second beginning, spoken by a throat that curves back into itself.

The Fold Does Not Forget does not argue against fading light. It insists that fading is not a disappearance but a reorientation of form—one that does not beg to be witnessed but exists regardless of perception. It is not hopeful. It is not despairing. It is, simply, truth turning inward.
 Jun 17 Rob Rutledge
hyun
your name is etched on
the skin of my walls
despite the lack of nails
or metals scratching.

i found you when
i couldn't even find myself—
i'm sure i don't mean as much
to you as you did to me.

"the ceiling feels nearer now,"
i tell myself.
the spaces you once filled
begin to dissipate.
they choke the air
out of my lungs.

i know i will not see you
in the foreseeable future,
but i'm glad i saw your face
at least once
in this lifetime.
#apparition #skin #walls #spaces #air #lungs #lifetime
 Jun 17 Rob Rutledge
hyun
the wind blew a little harder today—
all for a chance to kiss you.
i guess the coldness of days gone by
do not scare you at all.

now I whisper to find you,
in the smallest of cracks,
in the pauses between breaths,
in the vastness of the evening breeze.

nothing could ever make me
stop searching for you.

nor will i ever want to.
 Jun 14 Rob Rutledge
Caits
love me in the crowded room
where no one is watching
watch me dance among the stars
and bellow at the wind

let me sing my worries
and whisper my joys

love me like you love the falling leaves
with your hands tucked in your pockets
before jumping in with everything

love me like you aren’t afraid
in a crowded room
for someone to see you
Some things are better off dead
Buried in the ground
The memories stuck in my head
Spiraling around and around

My soul sits in its tomb
My hopes are the coffin it lies in
My inner child is the surrounding gloom
My dreams are the flowers lying on the stone

My trauma make up the walls that surround
My pain is the drawings underground
My soul was buried with the shackles that bind me
I had to bury it all so it would let me breathe

You have to stop looking behind to look ahead
That’s why some things are better off dead
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