Their writing often explores themes of introspection, love, loss, and resilience

What Waited in the Room

A Poem by Rayne LaDuex

There was a room I had avoided all my life.

Not because it was locked—but because I knew what waited behind the door. I had sealed it myself, years ago, when I still believed silence was safety. But silence ferments, and tonight it burst beneath my ribs like a storm no longer content to be weathered.

I entered.

No windows. No time. Just air thick with memory and the copper-taste of truths I’d swallowed whole.

Rage was already there.

Not stomping or snarling—just sitting. Still. Like a dog trained to wait. Its eyes met mine, and I knew instantly: this wasn’t some wild thing I could outrun. This was mine. Bone-forged. Blood-earned. It looked like every time I was told to calm down while my chest burned to speak. Like every inch of me I shaved down to make room for someone else’s comfort.

“You’ve come,” Rage said, not triumphantly, but… tenderly.

“I didn’t want to,” I whispered.

“You needed to.”

I didn’t argue. I paced. Rage watched, arms resting on its knees, head tilted like a parent waiting for a child to admit the wound.

“You ruin everything,” I muttered.

“No,” it said, calm as gravity, “I reveal what you pretend not to feel.”

I stopped moving.

It rose, then—slow, deliberate. Not to attack, but to stand beside me. Shoulder to shoulder. Flame beside flesh.

“I’m not your destruction,” it said. “I’m your inheritance.”

I trembled. Not from fear, but from recognition. I remembered every time I chose to be nice when I should’ve been honest. Every bruise that bloomed behind my smile. Every “it’s okay” that tore something quiet in me.

And I wept.

But Rage didn’t leave. It stayed. It held my hands—roughly, yes, but with a kind of reverence. As if it had been waiting for this moment, not to consume me… but to finally be heard.

And when the last sob fell quiet,
Rage stepped back into the corner
and nodded.

That’s when I noticed I wasn’t alone.

The shadows had thickened—gathered—not just around me, but within me. One stepped forward. Not the Rage, but the echo. Older. Colder. A second figure, familiar in a way that made my stomach knot.

It looked like me… if I had ever been honest.

My shadow.

Not the kind cast by light, but the kind cast by living. The version of me I exiled when I thought perfection meant survival. It had no smile. No cruelty. Just a presence. Quiet. Steady. Ancient.

“I’ve been waiting too,” it said. “You only ever called when you were breaking.”

It didn’t sound angry. Just tired.

I wanted to run. I wanted to scream. I wanted to deny the whole damn thing.

But I didn’t.

I sat.

Knees to knees. Silence to silence.

My shadow mirrored me, every movement slow and deliberate, as if afraid I might vanish. I stared into its eyes and saw a library of everything I abandoned: the hunger, the ache, the softness I shamed out of myself just to be “strong.” It didn’t accuse. It didn’t cry. It simply said, “I am you. The part you left behind.”

And for the first time, I let it speak without interruption.

We spoke in bruised lullabies. In missed calls. In the echo of footsteps leaving rooms we should’ve stayed in. It showed me the skeletons I kept dressed in Sunday best, and the aching child who learned to apologize for even existing.

I reached for it, and it didn’t pull away.

We folded into one another—not to fuse, not to disappear, but to remember. To re-member—to rejoin what had always been mine.

Rage stood in the corner, watching. Not jealous. Not cruel. Just present. A guardian. A witness.

And in that room—where no mask survived,
where nothing could hide behind civility or charm—
I met what I had feared most.

My fire.
My silence.
My truth.

And I did not destroy them.

I listened.

And for the first time,
they listened back.

Poetry: “What Waited in the Room” (May 2, 2025)

Rayne LaDuex is a passionate writer of poetry and short stories that delve into the raw and often unspoken facets of human experience. Drawing inspiration from the quiet moments of life and the intricate emotions that weave our stories, LaDuex creates work that is both deeply personal and universally resonant. Their writing often explores themes of introspection, love, loss, and resilience.

In addition to writing, LaDuex balances creativity with a career in project management and serves their community as a high school football coach, helping to mentor and inspire the next generation. They find harmony between structure and imagination, weaving these experiences into their art. Silence is their debut collection, a heartfelt offering to those who find solace in words and the spaces between them.

Order Silence here.

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Tags: poetry, Rayne LaDuex, Silence poetry collection, emotional resilience, introspective poetry, personal growth, contemporary poetry, poetry release 2025