My Life In Word

Friday Favorites: You Never Knew Me

February 6, 2026

~ by Elaine Cole Crombie

You never knew me
you who knew me so well
 
You who could trace my smile
on a pillow or in your mind
 
You who could identify my laughter
around the corner, up the stairs
 
You who could feel my warmth
on the coldest nights or hottest days
at your side
or a hundred miles away
 
You who could feel my soft breath
in whispers on your neck
the gentle caress of my hands,
the taunting kiss, the teasing walk
 
You who tasted the tears
that only you could bring
because you never knew me
you who knew me so well

The Significance of You Never Knew Me

Elaine Cole Crombie’s “You Never Knew Me” resonates deeply with my experience of being married for eleven years to someone who loved an idea of me, but never truly knew me. The poem articulates a painful paradox: intimacy without understanding, closeness without recognition. It names the quiet erosion that occurs when another person can map your habits, your laughter, your body, yet remain blind to your inner life.

Being unseen by someone who is supposed to know you intimately fractures the psyche in subtle but lasting ways. Over time, you begin to question your own reality: Am I difficult to know? Am I asking for too much? Is my interior life irrelevant? The poem’s repetition of “you who knew me so well” exposes how familiarity can masquerade as knowing. This kind of relationship trains a person to shrink—to translate themselves into palatable gestures rather than honest expression. The result is emotional dissonance: the self you live with internally and the self-reflected back to you no longer align.

What makes the poem especially powerful is its recognition that love without knowing is not neutral—it is corrosive. When someone cannot see your fears, values, or evolving identity, you become emotionally alone even in partnership. That loneliness, sustained over years, can hollow a person out. It teaches endurance instead of joy, silence instead of truth.

Ending such a relationship is not a failure of love, but an act of psychological preservation. Sometimes, leaving is the only way to reclaim the self that has been quietly disappearing. “You Never Knew Me” affirms that being known is not a luxury in love—it is essential. And when knowing never arrives, choosing to leave can be the first honest recognition of who you are.

Simona A. Brinson

Photo by Dollar Gill on Unsplash

A POEM A DAY 214

February 4, 2026

Memory in the Wind

I listen to the wind—
faint whispers of yesterday
tickle my skin.

My memory exhales,
memories whirl like
windblown leaves.

I hear his weathered
voice call my name—
not Mona, but Muuna.

I smell peppermint
and cracked leather,
his boots worn thin.

My nose twitches
from the aroma
of his spit bucket,
full of liquified tubaccah—
That he chawed

I hear words
I couldn’t decipher
in my youth.
Like yonder.

Seems far away,
but to him,
it was right there.

I hear his laughter—
As Thunderbolt and I,
frantically dash by
while he sat on the porch,
rocking in his recliner.

Only to learn later
that he’d said,
That girl is just as crazy
as her daddy on a horse!

My heart swells.
Tears fall—
the wind brushes them away.

Simona A. Brinson

Photo by Autumn Mott Rodeheaver on Unsplash

WORDS OF WISDOM #64

February 3, 2026

A POEM A DAY 212

February 2, 2026

ELEGY FOR THE BREATHING HORSE

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

Snow Bunnies

January 31, 2026

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

Photo by Val Vesa on Unsplash

Friday Favorites: Don’t Quit

January 31, 2026

Don’t Quit

~by Edgar A. Guest

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

Deciding Whether to Plug In

January 28, 2026

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

WORDS OF WISDOM #63

January 27, 2026

A POEM A DAY 211

January 26, 2026

BECOMING BLUE

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

Friday Favorites: Should You Go First

January 23, 2026

“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

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~ by Elaine Cole Crombie

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Memory in the Wind

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ELEGY FOR THE BREATHING HORSE

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~by Edgar A. Guest

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BECOMING BLUE

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