Eclipsed
- Sleight The Poet
- May 12
- 3 min read
Behind the Poem
Stepping into adulthood was harder than I expected. Trying to figure out my career, my identity, and romance all at the same time felt overwhelming. Around this period of my life, my girlfriend broke up with me, I lost my job, and I had to move back in with my parents. I felt lost. Like I had somehow drifted away from myself.
That’s when I really leaned into poetry.
Not just as an art form, but as a place to put everything I didn’t know how to carry.
On the romantic side, I met someone. And honestly, deep down, I already knew we wouldn’t last. There were too many spiritual differences, too many life differences, too many signs pointing toward something temporary instead of meaningful. But after experiencing so much rejection in such a short amount of time, it felt good to be wanted.
It felt good to feel needed. Loved. Accepted.
And that feeling made me ignore things I normally wouldn’t have ignored. Red flags became easier to excuse because the attention itself felt healing. For a moment, it made me feel like maybe I wasn’t as broken as I thought I was.
But looking back, I realize I was trying to rebuild my self-worth through another person. Or maybe even avoid rebuilding it altogether.
Because if I stayed in something comfortable—even if I knew it wasn’t healthy—I didn’t have to confront the parts of myself that still needed healing. I could stay in a place where I felt chosen without really addressing why I felt so empty to begin with.
But eventually the relationship collapsed under the weight of lies, deception, and emotional exhaustion. And when it ended, I wasn’t just sad.
I was angry.
Angry at the situation. Angry at the dishonesty. Angry at myself for seeing the signs and staying anyway. That anger became “Eclipsed.”
Every line in this poem felt like a fire I needed to release. I started writing from a place of pure frustration, but somewhere along the way the poem became something else. The anger started exposing the grief underneath it.
That’s why the imagery in the poem shifts between the sun and the moon.
My frustration is the sun—burning, consuming, impossible to ignore. My sorrow is the moon, reflecting that frustration back onto me until everything became eclipsed. Not just the relationship. Me.
In the poem I say,
“who knew that my heart would be eclipsed by so many of your empty lies.”
But the more I reflected on it, the more I realized I wasn’t only eclipsed by someone else’s lies—I was also eclipsed by my own. The lies I told myself about what I deserved. The lies I used to justify staying. The lies that allowed me to confuse temporary validation with genuine love.
And I think that’s why the tone softens near the end of the performance. Because beneath the anger was pain. And beneath the pain was me finally being honest with myself.
Writing this poem made me feel exposed. There’s a line in the poem where I say:
“tourists gather around for the view, not to aid in my pain, because they’re only looking to be entertained”
and at the time, that’s genuinely how it felt. Like people were consuming the performance without fully understanding the wounds behind it.
But poetry helped me process all of it and allowed me to take emotions that were chaotic, heavy, and overwhelming and give them shape. A poem. A performance. A release.
And in a strange way, “Eclipsed” became a reminder that healing doesn’t always begin softly. Sometimes it begins with finally allowing yourself to feel the anger you’ve been trying to suppress.
Beyond the Page
“Eclipsed” appears on my spoken word album eight twenty eight, a project that explores heartbreak, identity, faith, healing, and the emotional weight of becoming.
The performance above features the original album audio, where the pacing, intensity, and emotional shifts of the piece were meant to be experienced through voice and cadence.
If you'd like to explore more from the project, eight twenty eight is available wherever music is streamed.
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