Category: poetry

Tell me about the rain
and about weightless feathers.
Tell me about bullets
and crimson earth.

Bridges are burnt
with the tears of our future,
but we are told
that we don’t understand.

What is right.
Who is good.
Who is evil.
What is wrong.

We don’t understand
because we are young.

They sprinkle sand in our eyes.
Until we weep like willows
But we refuse to be blind.

They keep telling me
about the rain,
about the weight
of invisible feathers,

while the earth
is robbed bare
beneath our feet.

Funny how people don’t change and yet change a lot. And I don’t mean the hair. Naturally curly but when I want to dress up I straighten it. It’s inside.

I still can’t hear the outside world on my left ear. It makes the inside louder, doesn’t it? Anyway… I like my last selfie of the year.

By the way, this was the first post of 2025:

Have a good 2026. Be less hard on yourselves. You are doing better than you think.

Lots of love from me to you

It’s December 29th. The sun is out but it is freezing cold. I am inside. Trapped. Not trapped inside but trapped in my head. Not mentally. But physically. On the morning of Christmas day, I lost my voice. It’s not back yet. Being silent or near silent for 4 days, that’s not like me. A couple of days ago, my ears got infected too. And although I was in a lot of pain during one particular night, there is no pain now. Just stuffed. I hear, but not well. It’s as if my head is filled with cotton. At least this morning my sense of smell is back.

I haven’t listened to any music. It makes me nervous not hearing it right and also if there are other sounds or noises, I cannot distinguish them and it all turns into an uncomfortable blur.

Four weeks ago I had the flu. Apparently,this is a flare-up after the adrenaline of work fell away. Two weeks of Christmas holidays and I have been sick for most of it.

It weighs heavy on me to be put on hold by my own body. And of course it is also a constant source of joy and jokes for my loved ones. They don’t mean any harm. But I think, for once I need to be held instead of being the one who holds.

I feel trapped without my voice. And I feel trapped not really hearing what is going on around me. I know it will get better. Of course it will, but right now, I am in the audience of my own life. Quietly trying to understand what the ones around me are whispering.

This felt better said out loud than written down.

✨🎄✨

I came across this poem per chance today. It was written almost 10 years ago. I noticed that my writing is a lot more contained, restraint even than it was all those years ago. Maybe it is age, maybe it is circumstances. I don’t think I will analyse it deeply. And yet… It is an unusually strong poem for that time. In French and English, something that was unique and never reproduced.

Here it is, Broken Promises:

J’ai fait une promesse (I made a promise)
And I broke it
Ton coeur fragile (your fragile heart)
I couldn’t keep it together.

J’ai fait une promesse (I made a promise)
But I never stood a chance
Ton dernier sourire (your last smile)
Forever in my soul.

J’ai fait une promesse (I made a promise)
I wasn’t there
Tes yeux pâles (your pale eyes)
Haunting my dreams.

J’ai fait une promesse (I made a promise)
Bitter tears of goodbye
Ton âme disparu (your soul disappeared)
Forever alone.

I am not even sure if this memory is entirely accurate, but it is the one that stayed with me. I was watching German daytime TV sometime in 2012, half-distracted, not looking for anything in particular. Then an episode of Brothers and Sisters came on. I stayed on it at first because I recognised Sally Field. I had always liked her. And Balthazar Getty was in the scene too. Familiar names. Familiar faces. So I kept watching.

Only later did I learn that German television had not even aired the full show. Apparently only a couple of seasons made it onto daytime programming. What I saw that day was just a fragment, a small section of a larger story. Yet somehow that incomplete broadcast was enough to pull me in. By the end of the episode I was curious in a way I rarely am. I wanted more. I ordered the entire box set before I even understood why.

Something about the tone of the show lingered. And something about the way Matthew Rhys played Kevin Walker caught me by surprise. Sharp. Funny. Open. A little lost. A little too honest for his own good. He made me pay attention without trying. That is where the real shift began.

Back then IMDb still had discussion boards. It feels ancient now, like early internet archaeology. Tangled threads. Strange usernames. People gathering in messy little corners to talk about characters they cared about. In one of those corners someone had posted a link to a Kevin and Scotty fanfiction. I clicked it without expecting anything. I read it. And something inside me reacted, softly but unmistakably.

I realised that people were expanding stories that spoke to them. They were writing into emotional gaps. They were giving characters more space than television ever could. I had never seen anything like it so up close. And somehow, almost without intention, I slipped into that community. I commented. I read. I showed up. They welcomed me as if I had always been part of the group.

I read everything the writers there created. Every missing scene. Every imagined moment. Every alternative storyline. Their talent humbled me. It also inspired me. One night I had an idea for a story and wrote a short summary. I posted it, hoping someone else would turn it into something real. I was too unsure of myself to even imagine writing it.

The community had other plans.
They told me to do it myself.
If the idea had come to me, then I should be the one to develop it.

So I wrote it. Clumsily. Hesitantly. Nothing great. But it existed. That was the important part. That was the real beginning. Once I wrote the first piece, something inside me opened. The early 2010s were full of creative energy and I was suddenly part of it. LiveJournal became my home for a while, a place where writing was natural and constant and shared without fear.

Later I moved to Wattpad and shifted to original stories. I built new friendships there. One of them became my best friend. There were dramas of course because online communities are never simple. But there was also belonging. Meaningful conversations. Encouragement. When my best friend died in 2015 something in that world dimmed. I no longer felt the same connection to the platform. I slowly drifted away from it.
Eventually the blog became my only creative home. Quiet. Steady. Entirely mine. A place without noise or performance. A place where I could write because writing was part of my daily rhythm, not because anyone expected it.

Sometimes I hesitate to admit that I started with fanfiction. There is still a strange stigma attached to it. People assume it is not real writing. They are wrong. Some of the most powerful, emotional, well-crafted pieces I have ever read came from anonymous writers in those communities. That is where I learned voice, rhythm, confidence and the ability to write for the sake of creation itself.

And the truth is simple. My writing life began with one random episode on German TV. I stayed because of Sally Field and Balthazar Getty. I kept watching because something in the show hooked me. I ordered the box set because Matthew Rhys’s Kevin Walker felt too real to ignore. I found a community because I clicked on a single link in an old IMDb forum. I wrote my first story because kind strangers told me I could.
Everything since then grew from that quiet, accidental moment in 2012.

Bittersweet. Unexpected. Entirely mine. And thanks to Matthew Rhys.

Gather around
See the clown weeping
A willow of sorrows
Windows filled with tomorrows

Gather around
Taste the silence in their kisses
A well to drown in
Eternal love grows within

Gather around
Judge and stare at the unknown
Could it be that we are blind?
Could it be there’s more for us to find?

Gather around
Witness the old, witness the new
Be the one to take care
Be the one who is there

Gather around
Hear the soft night breathing
Of stories untold
Of hearts left out in the cold

Gather around
Let the veil shine like stars
Feel the breaking and the mending
Feel the beginning and the ending

Gather around
And see it all
Rich is the one who can hold
All the truths and nothingness
For they carry the keys
That open the path to peace.

Sometimes I hear people speak about my job as if it were something easy. As if my days were made of coffee, crafts and a bit of chatting with colleagues. As if anyone could walk into a room full of small children and simply manage. As if what we do grows on trees.

I smile at these comments, not because they are true but because they reveal how little people see. They have never stepped into my world for longer than a school visit. They do not feel the weight of twenty tiny emotions shifting in the same room. They do not notice how much of ourselves we give. They do not understand that early childhood education is not babysitting. It is the beginning of everything.

I work with children in the years that shape them most. Years where language grows and emotions take form. Years where confidence is built or broken. Years where a child learns what safety feels like. Years where small hands learn to trust their own strength. We accompany future doctors and future artists. Future mechanics and future judges. We are the ground they stand on before they even know what standing means.

And still, we are often treated as if we chose something small. Something anyone could do. The old line that every Hausfrau could be an Educator still shows up from time to time. I smile at it because the people who say this would not last two hours in my group. It is easy to underestimate what you do not understand.

I am an educator, a pre-school teacher.
But I am also a nurse, a referee, a psychologist and an observer.
I am a storyteller and a translator of emotions.
I am a coach for small bodies and a guide for growing minds.
I am a mediator when conflicts appear out of nothing.
I am a safe place when the world feels too loud.
I am a detective who notices the details others miss.
I am a gardener who tends to patience and curiosity.
I am a builder of trust, a calmer of storms and a quiet anchor when a child is overwhelmed.
I am a mirror that helps them recognise themselves.
I am structure and softness in the same breath.

And with the parents I become something else again.
I am a partner in their child’s growth.
I am a source of reassurance on difficult mornings.
I am the one who explains what their child cannot yet put into words.
I am someone they confide in, sometimes more than they planned.
I am the calm voice when their own worry rises.
I am the bridge between home and school, between how a child feels and how a child behaves.
I am a witness to their child’s milestones and their struggles and I carry both with care.
I understand that parents are learning too.

And the day is never done when the children go home.
There is planning and preparing.
There is organising the next week.
There is evaluating what worked and what did not.
There is supporting trainees, guiding them, holding space for their questions and insecurities.
There is paperwork, meetings, messages from parents and colleagues.
There is the constant mental list of what needs to happen tomorrow.
My job does not end at the door. I am available at all hours, every day of the year.

Yes, I have a lot of vacation, but I need it to recover.
My mind needs time to empty itself.
My body needs to heal from the daily parade of germs and exhaustion.
And sometimes, like last week, the body shuts down earlier. There are days where I am spat on, coughed on, covered in snot and other bodily fluids before it is even ten in the morning. There are days where I give more than I have. There are days where my strength runs thin.
But I still show up. I show up because it matters. Because these years matter. Because children deserve adults who see them and hear them and hold space for them.

I love my job. I am passionate about it. And while I wrote this, I realised something simple and unshakeable. I cannot imagine doing anything else. I would not survive a world filled with numbers and spreadsheets. My mind does not work that way and it never has. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. Mine were meant for children, for presence, for patience, for the quiet, steady work of guiding small humans through their first years in the world. This is where I belong.

Kleeschensdag arrives quietly every year, long before the rush of Christmas. People who don’t know the tradition often think it’s another version of Santa Claus, but it isn’t. St. Nicholas has nothing to do with Santa. He is older, gentler, more rooted in our history. He was a real bishop, the patron of children, which is why he wears a mitre and carries a staff. He doesn’t fly across the sky or land on rooftops. He comes with a donkey that helps him carry his gifts, and he is rarely alone. In Luxembourg, Houseker walks beside him… the darker figure from old stories, the strict counterweight in the tale.

Santa Claus may be larger and louder, but St. Nic holds his own soft corner of early December. For children, that difference is everything.

Kleeschensdag is the night of plates laid out on the table. It is songs sung together… the ones they learned at school and the ones we remember from when we were small. It is the quiet belief that someone kind might visit in the night and leave a small surprise.

And this is exactly why the tradition matters. Not because we want to lie, but because we want to protect a little wonder for as long as it naturally lasts. Children find the truth slowly, gently. And when they do, the story doesn’t die. It simply becomes theirs in a new way.

In my house, St. Nic still comes every year. My children are 15, 17, and 20. They know the truth, of course. But the magic is still there when they walk into the living room on the morning of the 6th and find their plate of sweets waiting. We still put our plates out the night before, each in its place. We still sing… usually. Tonight was the first time in over fifteen years that we didn’t. And it reminded me how quietly moments end. How a tradition can happen for the last time without us noticing. (In some households boots or shoes are polished and put next to the doors and filled with sweets – it depends where you are from, I guess.)

Last year, my youngest daughter looked at me and asked how we do it. How we manage to fill the plates without them hearing or seeing anything. I simply said, “It’s not us. It’s St. Nic.” She knew I was teasing… but she also didn’t know the real answer. And that, too, is a kind of magic. That even at this age, we can still surprise them. That they still wonder how we do it.
Maybe this is what Kleeschensdag really teaches us.

To keep these small rituals alive while we can.
To let belief stay as long as it wants to.
And to hold on to the warmth we create together, even as the years keep moving us forward.

Everything happens for a first and a last time.

*sigh* I wonder if I was a good girl this year and St.Nic will come and fill my plate tonight. I will have to sleep early and see for myself in the morning.

Well that’s that… I guess the music year is wrapped. There are some surprises for me. I use stats and that looks slightly different. Not by much, but enough for me to notice. That said, I spent my year in music with lots of physical media. Back to basics? Yes. A little bit. So while wrapped is a fun thing that we will see for a few days around now, it’s not necessarily representative nor painting the music picture as a whole.

Personally, I am a bit silent. Literally. I lost my voice. There is just silence and it is actually quite funny for the kids and for Patrick too. For once I am quite quiet. Nothing above a whisper. I have been quite sick for a couple of days with a fever and whatnot. I am on the mend. Hurray. Just, as I said, silent and with a sore throat. ✨

Have a great Wednesday, enjoy the music.

Oddly enough, this was the second post in a row referring to Spotify, lol

The world tilts
to see if I’ll slip off its ledge.
I don’t.
I never do.

I am outrunning my shadow,
drowning it on the moon.
Floating on feathers,
I bend the rainbows
to outgrow the grays.

I fit in your pocket
with my fingertip stars.
I could be taller than the crumbling mountains
but choose to be sand in your pants.
A strange choice,
mine. And it is fine.

Dancing waves in the ocean
run towards the shore.
Fire and glass
grow underneath my feet,
and I wonder
where the ghost of me has gone.
Did my soul
swallow it whole?

If you blink the flies away too many nights
I will disappear.
Whispers crawl up the raindrops of my thoughts,
a spider’s net hunting them all.

I am sleeping
on checkered emotions
with colours sewn onto me.
Checkmated. Checkmate.