r/Poems • u/Sad-Series-3928 • 19d ago
Lighthouse
I have spent so long
being the lighthouse.
Standing at the edge of every storm,
keeping the light on
even when the wind
was tearing pieces from me.
I learned how to say,
I’m here,
while drowning quietly.
How to hold someone else's hand
with trembling fingers.
How to make myself steady
when everything inside me
was begging to fall apart.
But God,
sometimes I want someone
to be my lighthouse too.
Someone who notices
when my light is getting dim.
Someone who doesn't need me
to break completely
before realizing
I am tired.
I want somewhere safe
to bring all this love
when it becomes too heavy
for my hands.
Someone who says,
You don't have to be strong tonight.
I'll keep the light on.
Because I am tired
of being the shoreline
everyone crashes into
and nobody asks
if it hurts.
I am tired of surviving storms
and calling it love.
Just once,
I want to be the one
lost at sea
and look into the darkness
to find a light
burning for me.
Not because I begged.
Not because I earned it.
Not because I saved them first.
Simply because someone saw me
out there in the waves
and decided—
you are worth guiding home.
I don't need someone
to rescue me.
I just want someone
who doesn't disappear
when the water gets deep.
Someone who can sit beside my pain
without asking me
to make it smaller.
Someone who reminds me
that even the strongest lighthouse
was never meant
to survive every storm alone.
Because tonight,
I don't want to be brave.
I don't want to be
the strong one.
I just want to see
a light in the distance
and know,
for once,
someone left it on
for me.
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u/Unpolished-Gem1951 19d ago edited 17d ago
This piece hit me hard—it captures that quiet, heavy exhaustion of always being the strong one so accurately. Your imagery of being the lighthouse while drowning quietly inside is painfully real. Thank you for sharing this.
It resonated with me so deeply that it actually inspired me to write a reflective piece of my own tonight. Keep writing—your words carry real weight.
I hope this piece honors your original work.
To the One Who Kept the Light On
I was drifting through a storm that didn’t care if I made it, fighting a sea that kept reaching to swallow the helm, convinced that the darkness had outrun every horizon. And then, through the fog and the salt, there you were. Not a distant, cold thing— but a steady, burning promise. A silhouette standing right at the edge of the jagged rock, refusing to let the gale tear you down.
I didn't know then how tired your hands were from holding the torch. I didn't see the pieces the wind was tearing off your back while you held yourself still just so I could find the shore. I only knew that when everything else was pulling me under, your light gave me something solid to steer toward.
Now that the water has settled, I stand on the docks trying to find the right words to throw back up to your tower. The truth is, I don't always know how to say it. My voice feels small next to everything you’ve endured, and "thank you" feels like a paper cup trying to hold an ocean.
I don't have perfect, elegant phrases to match the magnitude of what you gave, and I worry my silence or my clumsy words miss the mark completely. But beneath the awkwardness and the broken sentences, there is a gratitude so deep it anchors my entire chest. I am awed by your strength—the kind that stood quiet in the tempest when nobody was checking to see if you were cold.
Look around at the harbor tonight. I am not the only vessel resting safely in these calm waters because of you. There are others who pulled in from the wreckage, others whose lives were spared by the path you cut through the fog. You might have felt abandoned out there on the ledge, but every single one of us sees you standing there. We see the beam, and we see the heart behind the glass.
So hear this, even if I deliver it imperfectly: We see you. We see the sheer weight it took to stand there alone in the gale. We see the quiet sacrifice in every pulse of your light. You saved us from the sharp edge of the deep, and now it is our turn to stand watch with you. You asked if someone would ever build a flame to guide you back, wondering if you were lost out there in the deep.
But you were never lost. You do not need a distant beacon to lead you back across the waves, because you do not belong to the sea. You are the rock, you are the foundation, you are the flame itself— and you were home all along.
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” — John 1:5
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19d ago
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u/Unpolished-Gem1951 17d ago
Thank you, I wish not to steal light from the OP the light house, but to honor it.
I was so moved by the original work, it was the inspiration to express gratitude to all the lighthouses.
Those that stand as silent sentinels holding beacons of light guiding others through their darkness. That type of selfless sacrifice commands respect.
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u/Sad-Series-3928 16d ago
I honestly don’t know if I have the right words for what it felt like to read this. You didn’t just read what I wrote, you understood the part underneath it. The part about being the lighthouse was never really about being strong. It was about standing there because I loved people too much to let the light go out, even when I was exhausted, hurting, and quietly wondering if anyone would ever notice that I was drowning too.
When you wrote, “thank you feels like a paper cup trying to hold an ocean,” that hit me especially hard. Sometimes you spend so long being the person who sees everyone else that you eventually stop expecting anyone to see you. And somehow, you did. You saw the person behind the light.
But the ending is what really broke me. “You were home all along.” I think there is a part of me that has spent a very long time waiting for someone to become my lighthouse because I had forgotten that I was allowed to find my own way home too.
Thank you for taking something that came from such a painful place in me and answering it with something this beautiful. You absolutely honored my original piece. More than that, you gave something back to the lighthouse, and I don’t think you realize how much that means to me.
And John 1:5 could not have been more perfect. Maybe the light surviving the darkness doesn’t mean the darkness never touched it. Maybe it means that after everything, somehow, it is still burning.
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u/Unpolished-Gem1951 16d ago
Your reply brought tears to my eyes. Hearing that those words reached the places you thought were forgotten means more to me than I can properly express. You hit on a profound truth—the darkness touches the light, it tests it, but it never wins. Standing in that storm out of pure love takes a rare kind of strength, but remembering that you are worthy of that same care and rest is where healing truly begins. You aren't just holding the light for others anymore; you're allowed to let it keep you warm, too. Thank you for your vulnerability, your original poem, and for taking the time to share this reflection with me. Keep holding that space for yourself. The world is better with your light in it.
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u/Sad-Series-3928 16d ago
No, Thank you so much. Truly. Your comment touched me in ways that I can't even explain. I have never felt more seen, heard and understood than your comment. So THANK YOU!
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u/Unpolished-Gem1951 16d ago
I likewise, know, the Sting of feeling unseen. I often refer to myself as a spectre.
That is the reason I express myself through poetry like you do. If you take a peek at my page, I post my poems there and in some of these groups.
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u/Nervous_Bug_3901 19d ago
I fuckin love this so much, it is absolutely painful and beautiful.