Jia Zhenia

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Under the Weight of Living

How do I describe
this debilitating ache in my chest?

The moment I pause
long enough to feel it,
my eyes flood—
as though sorrow
has been waiting patiently
behind my ribs
for silence to open the door.

There is a rawness to it,
a pain with no visible wound,
only weight—
heavy and ancient,
pressing against my lungs
until breathing itself
feels like labor.

Is this the sorrow of being alive?
The quiet price
we pay
to love,
to hope,
to remain soft
in a world that bruises everything tender?

Sometimes
I want to lay naked
on the cold floor
of a darkened room,
curl inward like something broken,
and ask the Creator
why life must be so unbearably cruel.

Why must the heart
be built to carry
what the body cannot?

I feel a thousand bricks
stacked across my back.
My bones ache from holding them.
My spirit trembles
from pretending
I still can.

And all I want—
all I truly want—

is to let go.

Take me instead
to an open field of grass
beneath a warm and forgiving sun.
Let me breathe again.
Let me lie still
and watch clouds drift slowly
across an endless sky.

Let me become small
before the universe,
just for a moment,
and remember
that I was never meant
to carry the whole world alone.

May 16, 2026

life, mental-health, poetry, reflection, writing
Between the Rain and the Ache

I woke with a weight in my chest,
a quiet, pressing ache.

I stared at the skylight,
watched raindrops gather
before falling—
soft taps against the glass
like questions
I didn’t want to answer.

I did not move.

Maybe it was the restless night,
the turning, the searching
for a place to land—
or maybe
I was held still
by something heavier than sleep.

Pain has a way of doing that—
not loud, not urgent,
just enough
to keep you where you are.

What is the meaning of life
when it feels like this?

I thought I knew once.
Thought if I held things carefully,
lived them gently,
life would unfold
into something I could understand.

But life shifts—
quietly, without warning—
placing new weight into your hands—
asking,
can you carry this too?

I have known heartbreak—
the kind that leaves an empty space,
like a missing limb
you learn to live without.

But this—

this feels like breaking
from the inside out.

What kind of love is this
that fractures me when you are not around?

Why does some love ache
only when it leaves,
while another
shakes my whole being,
as if life loosens its grip without you?

I lie here,
between the rain
and the heaviness in my chest,
listening—

Not for answers,
but for something softer,
something that might say

you don’t have to understand
this moment
to survive it.

And so I stay—
held between
what hurts
and what falls—

waiting
for one of them
to let go first.

April 12, 2026

existential, life, Love, poetry, reflection, writing
A Life Unmeasured

As I stood beneath the evergreens,
their needles brushed in gold by the sinking sun,
I found myself asking—

why does work hold such weight in your world?

Is it the title,
the quiet gleam of prestige,
the promise of more—
or is it something deeper,
a fire you tend with devotion?

You spoke of potential
as something to be fulfilled,
as though a life is only worthy
when fully spent, fully used—

as though we are vessels
measured by how much we can hold
and how quickly we can pour ourselves out.

And I wonder—

what if someone chooses otherwise?

What if they linger
in the softness of the present,
palms open to the ordinary light,
content to be—
not more, not better,
just here?

To savor what is already given,
without the urgency to become.

Would that be so wrong?

Or is there a quiet kind of courage
in not chasing,
in not proving,
in simply staying—
long enough
to feel the sun
before it disappears?

April 6, 2026
Carried Away, Returned

I was sitting on the shore
when the sky turned without asking—
a storm gathering its voice
in the distance.

Then a wave rose—
sudden, towering,
as if the ocean had chosen me.

It crashed.

And pulled me out with it.

I tried to swim against it,
kicking toward something I could still call mine.
I fought the current
like resistance could rewrite the tide.

But I was too small
for something that did not need my permission.

Before I understood what was happening,
I was no longer on land.

So I surrendered.

I opened my eyes beneath the water,
expecting silence,
an ending.

But light was still there—
thin gold threads
piercing through the blue.

I was not dead.

The ocean was alive around me—
coral breathing in color,
reefs unfolding like quiet cities,
fish weaving through me
as if I had always belonged.

I let go of the fight.

I followed the current,
the rhythm,
the flow of the water.

And I learned how to float.
I did not want to leave.

I wanted to become part of the current—
to dissolve into the vastness,
to be carried
without question, without return.

But then—

a light.

Spinning slowly above,
steady against the storm.

A lighthouse.

Waiting, patiently.

For me to return to the surface,
Reunited with the land.

Calling me back
without a voice.

it simply stayed—
anchored to the shore,
meeting me gently,
never leaving, never taking.

I knew then—

I could love the ocean
and still not belong to it.

I could be changed by its depths,
its beauty, its danger,
its wild, consuming grace—

and still choose the shore.

So I returned.

Not because the ocean meant less,
but because I was not made
to live inside what could take me whole.

And even now,
standing on the sand at the beach,

I still remember
what it felt like
to be carried away.

April 4, 2026

life, nature, poetry, reflection, short-story, writing
What You Taught Me

The first time I came home
with wet cheeks and trembling hands,
I carried the shape of hurt
in a language I didn’t yet know.

You listened—
or maybe you didn’t—
and said only this:
fight back,
you are on your own.

I thought it was strength
you were handing me.
I didn’t know
it was absence.

So I learned—
first grade, second, third—
how to make my small body loud,
how to build fists out of fear,
how to swallow tears before they were seen.

I stood alone
because I was told to.
I survived
because I had to.

And somewhere in those years,
something inside me hardened—
not into armor,
but into distance.

Now I am grown,
and love stands in front of me
with open hands,
soft voice,
gentle eyes—

and I do not know
how to step forward.

To lean feels unnatural,
like gravity reversed.
To ask feels unbearable,
like peeling skin from bone.

So I stand here—
wanting to be held,
aching to be known,
yet flinching at warmth
as if it might burn.

I protest love
before it can leave me.
I turn away
before it can fail.

Because somewhere deep inside,
a child is still listening
to the only truth she was given:

you are on your own.

And I wonder—
how do I unlearn survival
when it is the only way
I know how to live?

How do I soften
without breaking open
all the wounds
that taught me how to stay alive?

March 27, 2026

avoidant, healing, Love, mental-health, poetry, reflection, trauma, writing
The Monster Was My Mother

The sirens began before the sky could darken—
a long, blaring warning:
the monster is coming.

People scattered like loose papers in the wind,
hands shaking,
doors slamming,
counting down the end of the world.

But I had been here before.
This nightmare had memorized me.

So I followed the routine—
ran without thinking,
into a building that felt too familiar,
searching for a place
small enough to disappear.

A cabinet—
too tight, too obvious.

A sofa—
maybe I could become furniture,
mute and unnoticed—
no, too stood out, too seen.

An air vent above—
maybe if I climbed high enough
I could become air,
slip through cracks,
be nowhere.

But time pressed its hand against my throat.

Because I remembered—
what happens when the monster finds me.

Bruises blooming
purple, blue,
like something trying to grow out of pain.

Words—
spoken,
and wrapped,
tight around my neck,
until breath forgets how to return.

Winter nights—
bare skin against cold punishment,
locked outside
until I learned
how to disappear
without leaving.

I begged.
I always begged.

But she wasn’t budging.

No matter where I hid,
she would find me—
she always did.

So I curled into a corner,
small as I could make myself,
waiting—
not to escape,
but to be found.

Waiting for the ritual
to begin again.

But then—
silence.

Then something stranger—
laughter.
Voices rising like light:

The monster is gone.

You’re safe.

I stayed hidden longer,
because safety had never sounded like this.

Then slowly—
I unfolded myself
from the dark.

I stepped outside,
into a world that wasn’t hunting me.

And there,
in the quiet after terror,
I understood—

The monster I had been hiding from
all this time

was my mother.

March 23, 2026

healing, life, mental-health, poetry, reflection, trauma, writing
Afraid Not of Death, But of Absence

I woke from a dream
where I was dying—
alone.

Alone,
as I searched your eyes
and found only coldness.

Alone,
as I called your name
and silence answered in your place.

Alone,
as I reached for your warmth
and touched nothing but air.

Alone,
as our laughter—once alive—
collapsed into a room full of echoes.

Alone,
as I stretched toward your love
and found a hollow,
a house without a soul.

—

I am not afraid of dying.

I am afraid
of living in a world
where I am unseen by you,
where something once connected
comes undone.

I am afraid
of boarding a long-distance train
without your gaze to hold me,
without your goodbye to anchor me
to something that was real.

I am afraid
you will forget me—
as if we never happened,
as if our shared existence
was only a passing dream
I imagined alone.

And most of all,
I am afraid
that at the end of the day,
when all things quiet—

I will still have to go,
still have to be,

without your love.

March 22, 2026

Love, mortality, poetry, reflection
A Sunday Visit

On a quiet Sunday afternoon,
a knock at the door—
soft, certain.

I opened,
and there he stood,
a stranger dressed in familiarity.

“My name,” he said,
“is Mortality.”

I hesitated—
not from fear,
but from the weight of being seen.

“What do I owe
the pleasure
of such an early visit?”

He smiled, almost kindly.
“You’ve been thinking of me.
I thought it best
we meet.”

So I let him in.

I brewed tea
with trembling hands,
and we sat across
a small wooden table—
two beings
pretending this was ordinary.

I looked into his eyes.

There—
a flicker of time,
a sweetness
too delicate to keep,
and beneath it,
the quiet tragedy
of how briefly
everything is allowed to exist.

I stared longer
than I should have—
and saw, waiting patiently,
the end of all things.

My chest tightened.
Grief arrived
before loss had reason to.

Tears gathered—
uninvited,
but understood.

Mortality leaned forward,
gentler now,
and told me a story:

Two lovers,
born in different seasons—
one of sun,
one of falling leaves.

They were never meant
to stay,
only to pass
through one another.

But for a few fleeting weeks,
their worlds overlapped.

And in that brief collision,
they loved—
fully,
recklessly,
as if time
had forgotten them.

They knew
it would end.

And still,
they chose each other
anyway.

Mortality finished his tea.

At the door,
he turned—
not as a stranger,
but something closer
to a teacher.

“I leave you a gift,”
he said.

Not time—
never time.

But urgency.

The quiet, burning knowing
that this moment—
this breath,
this love,
this life—

is already
leaving.

And therefore,
is everything.

March 22, 2026

life, Love, mortality, poem
Borrowed Seasons

You were Autumn,
and I was Summer—

I thought I came to you
to learn the quiet wisdom of ripening,
how to soften into my fullest becoming.

But beneath our different seasons,
our souls were cut from the same cloth—
threaded with a knowing
older than time.

At first, I resisted—
the chill in your air,
the slowing of your light,
when I only knew how to bloom.

But something beyond us—
some unseen gravity—
gently took hold,

and drew us closer
until we could no longer pretend
we were separate.

So we surrendered.

To the lesson.
To the love.
To what this life had been quietly
waiting for us to feel.

And in that fleeting crossing of seasons,
we found
the sweetest tenderness—
a belonging so soft
it almost hurt to hold.

Our hearts knew,
even as they opened,

that this was borrowed time—

and loved anyway.

March 21, 2026

life, Love, poetry, reflection