Beneath the pallid winter boughs
Where daylight wanes and shivers thin,
A sable horse, with lowered brows,
Stands cloaked in fog and breath and sin.
Its nostrils bloom with ghostly fire,
A vapor born of hidden heat,
As though the soul, grown cold and tired,
Still whispered live through lungs and beat.
The leather creaks. The iron waits.
The reins lie slack, yet bind the air.
No rider speaks. No hand dictates.
The silence bears a heavier care.
Each exhale curls like vanished speech—
A word the body will not keep,
A truth too near the bone to reach,
Released, at last, into the deep.
Around it, trees with crooked arms
Arch like a tribunal of grief,
Their branches spelling ancient harms
In alphabets of withered leaf.
O patient beast, whose breath remains
Though warmth retreats from sky and ground,
You teach what mortal flesh retains
When all the world grows still—
the sound
of staying.
Simona A. Brinson
Photo by Anand Thakur on Unsplash
©mylifeinword.com All rights reserved.
It’s thirty-five degrees in this small North Florida town, the kind of cold that feels borrowed, like it won’t stay long enough to learn my name. Then they arrive— not snowflakes exactly. Reminding me of dust bunnies as they drifting loose from the sky, soft, unsure, floating past my face before vanishing into nothing. I call them snow bunnies, because they hop more than they fall, because they feel playful, temporary, because this place isn’t supposed to have them. They brush my cheeks with silence, melt on contact, leave only the idea of cold on my skin. The sun stays out, unapologetic, as if winter is just visiting, as if this is all a rumor. The flurries pass as quickly as they came, and suddenly the air feels empty again. Tonight the temperature will drop into the low twenties, and I wait— like a child listening for reindeer on the roof, heart tilted toward possibility, wondering what the dark might bring to this unlikely, southern sky. Simona A. Brinson
©mylifeinword.com All rights reserved.
Don’t Quit
When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest! if you must─but never quit.
Life is queer, with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about
When he might have won if he’d stuck it out;
Stick to your task, though the pace seems slow─
You may succeed with one more blow.
Success is failure turned inside out─
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt─
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems afar;
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit─
It’s when things seem worse that YOU MUSTN’T QUIT.
It is often misattributed to John Greenleaf Whittier or listed as anonymous, but literary scholarship credits Edgar A. Guest (1881–1959), a well-known American poet whose work focused on perseverance, optimism, and everyday resilience. Published in the Detroit Free Press (March 4,1921). This poem is now in the public domain.
I like the poem Don’t Quit because it speaks plainly and honestly about perseverance at the moments when giving up feels most reasonable. It doesn’t romanticize struggle or pretend that hardship is noble in itself; instead, it acknowledges exhaustion, doubt, and failure as universal experiences. The poem meets the reader where they are—tired, discouraged, and unsure—and then gently insists that stopping is not the answer. That honesty is what makes it feel trustworthy.
What the poem means to me is rooted in its reminder that success and failure are often separated by only one more attempt. The lines about being “near when it seems afar” resonate deeply, because so much of life feels that way: progress is invisible until suddenly it isn’t. The poem reframes struggle as a sign that you are still in the fight, not that you are losing. That perspective has helped me re-interpret setbacks not as proof of inadequacy, but as part of the process of becoming who I am trying to be.
Ultimately, I value this poem because it emphasizes endurance over perfection. It reminds me that quitting is often a response to discouragement, not a matter of destiny, and that persistence itself is an act of quiet courage. In moments when motivation fades, the poem functions less as inspiration and more as grounding—a steady voice that says staying is enough, and trying again matters.
Simona A. Brinson
©mylifeinword.com All rights reserved.
The breaker blew sometime before dawn—a quiet failure, the house holding its breath. By morning the electrician arrived with a tool belt and calm hands. The breaker, it turned out, hadn’t really blown at all. It came back on the moment he flipped it—the same breaker I had flipped several times before finally calling him. And just like that, as if timing mattered more than effort, the power returned. Maybe nothing was broken. Maybe it just needed the right moment. Or the willingness to try again. Like sparks don’t remember who wakes them.
The vibes were humming. You know the kind—electric, unspoken, that look in the eyes with a little voltage behind it. I gave him eyes back. Circuit closed.
The first time he came, I felt it, then talked myself out of it, told myself maybe I imagined the current. This time, I knew. You don’t mistake electricity once it arcs. You don’t keep flipping the switch without admitting you’re listening for the click.
As he was leaving, I caught him in the reflection of the screen door. Not a glance. A stop. A look. Long enough to matter. I don’t think he knew I could see him seeing me. Or maybe he did. Maybe seeing was enough.
So I shot my shot. Called it what it was. Made the call.
I asked if he was single. He said yes—but that he was "kinda" dating someone. So, single and dating?
Dating—
not a relationship,
just two people
standing near the outlet,
deciding whether
to plug in.
I asked him out on a date. Just like that.
"Would you like to go out on a date?"
A chuckle.
"You wanna go out on a date…with me?"
His voice stuttered, stammered, tripped its own breaker.
"Yes. With you!"
He said he’d think about it, let me know. Fifty-fifty odds—still a live wire. Because sometimes power doesn’t rush anywhere. Sometimes it lingers in the space between switches, in the quiet after the lights come on, where no one is sure who’s holding the charge—or if it needs to be used at all.
Simona A. Brinson
Photo by Harrison Broadbent on Unsplash
©mylifeinword.com All rights reserved.
©mylifeinword.com All rights reserved.
No one remembers the moment it happened, only that the sea noticed first.
The blue starfish had once been the color of sand, pale and unremarkable, shaped like something meant to blend in rather than be seen. It clung to rocks and let tides pass over it without complaint. It learned early that survival did not require brilliance—only patience.
Then the water began to change.
Storms came that pressed the ocean into itself, folding grief and salt and sky together. Ships crossed above, carrying losses the sea could not refuse: coins tossed for luck, tears dropped without ceremony, words spoken too late and swallowed whole. The blue starfish lay still and listened.
Blue seeped into it slowly.
Not the bright blue of postcards or shallow coves, but the deep, enduring blue that gathers where light thins and pressure teaches humility. The blue of holding. The blue of staying.
It absorbed the ache of currents that never rested, the patience of water learning the shape of stone, the sorrow of the moon, calling across the water to something that always answered by pulling away. Each tide left a trace. Each absence stained it further.
Over time, the blue starfish forgot it had ever been anything else.
Now it rests where the sea darkens, its color unmistakable. Not loud. Not decorative. Earned. When the light touches it just right, it does not shine—it deepens, as if remembering everything it has carried and chosen not to release.
That is how the blue starfish became blue.
By staying.
Simona A. Brinson
Photo by David Clode on Unsplash
©mylifeinword.com All rights reserved.
“Should You Go First” offers a quiet glimpse into what authentic, enduring love looks like—love that does not cling, but steadies itself in the face of loss. Written by Albert Rowswell after the death of his wife, the poem is an act of devotion shaped by acceptance rather than fear. Its gentle sorrow is not despairing; instead, it carries a reflective calm that honors shared memories as sacred and lasting. The speaker’s willingness to remain, to walk on with memory as companion, reveals a quiet courage rooted in gratitude. Love here is patient, faithful, and unselfish—concerned not with possession, but with continuity. The poem invites us to see death differently, not as an absolute ending explained by loss, but as a temporary absence bridged by love, memory, and hope.
Simona Brinson
Photo by Esteban Amaro on Unsplash
©mylifeinword.com All rights reserved.
©mylifeinword.com All rights reserved.
My Life In Word 