12/30/25
At night I read—
not for instruction,
but for the relief of recognition.
My hair cools as it dries.
Satin slides over my toes.
My dogchild breathes, warm and certain,
pressed into my outer thigh.
Nothing asks me to fix it.
🐓
Day is for forms and faces,
for holding stories steady
inside a system that forgets people.
I love the work—
but I disappear in it.
🐓
Night gives me back my edges.
I notice.
I stay.
Xoxo Ollie
✌🏻
Hello Hina, this poem feels like someone finally returning to themselves after a day spent holding the world together for others.
It captures the quiet relief of reading not to learn, but to feel seen in the soft mirror of another mind.
The small details cooling hair, satin on toes, the warm weight of a dog create a sanctuary made of touch and presence.
There’s something deeply human in the comfort of a creature pressed against you, asking nothing, simply existing beside you.
Day becomes a place where the self thins out, stretched by stories and systems that forget the people inside them.
The line “I disappear in it” carries the ache of loving one’s work while losing one’s edges to it.
The poem honours the exhaustion of caring in a world that rarely pauses long enough to care back.
Night becomes a gentle reclamation, a slow re‑drawing of one’s outline after being blurred by daylight demands.
The final lines feel like a soft promise to stay present with oneself, even if only in the quiet hours.
In the end, the piece becomes a small refuge a reminder that we all need a place where nothing asks us to fix it, only to be.
Beautiful