Under The Bodhi Tree

Written By Britt Wolfe
Under The Bodhi Tree poem by BRITT WOLFE author

Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe

They say he sat
until the questions ran out of weapons.
Until fear finished speaking.
Until the night learned
it could not move him.

But I am not interested
in the man as monument.
I am interested in the act.

In the decision
to stay.

I sit too.
Not beneath a sacred fig,
but under the weight of my own mind.
Under memory.
Under the habits of bracing.
Under a life that taught me
escape before stillness,
explanation before feeling,
obedience before truth.

The world does not fall silent for me.
It offers distraction.
It offers urgency.
It offers a thousand ways
to get up and leave.

Old stories arrive
dressed as necessity.
Fear comes first,
promising protection.
Desire follows,
offering relief if I just reach.
Doubt circles,
asking who I think I am
to sit here unarmoured.

I recognise them.

I have fed them before.
I have mistaken them for guides.
I have called their demands wisdom.

This time,
I do not move.

I let the storm speak.
I let the body tremble.
I let the ache have language
without turning it into law.

There is no lightning.
No instant clarity.
No choir.

Only the slow, unspectacular truth
that nothing appearing inside me
is permanent.
That every sensation
rises,
changes,
passes
when I stop trying to command it.

I see how suffering multiplies
when I argue with what is.
How it loosens
when I stop insisting
this moment be different.

Awakening, I am learning,
is not transcendence.

It is intimacy.

It is knowing pain
without becoming it.
It is meeting fear
without kneeling to it.
It is staying present
long enough to see
that I am not my thoughts,
not my memories,
not the stories I inherited
about what I am allowed to be.

I am the one who can sit.

Not because I am enlightened,
but because I am willing.

Willing to feel.
Willing to remain.
Willing to let the illusion of control
collapse without replacing it
with another.

Under this ordinary tree —
this breath,
this body,
this unremarkable moment —
something quiet happens.

I stop running.

And in the absence of flight,
clarity arrives
not as an answer,
but as peace with the question.

This is my awakening.

Not the end of suffering,
but the end of my refusal
to meet it.

Not escape,
but freedom.

And it begins
exactly where I am,
sitting,
awake,
at last.

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Poetry by Britt Wolfe:

Poetry
Mohini
Mohini

This poem is about Mohini, a white tiger whose life has stayed with me for years — not as a symbol of rarity, but as a mirror. She was admired, managed, controlled, and called “lucky,” while being slowly erased of choice and wildness. Writing this wasn’t about retelling her story so much as listening to what it reveals about us: how often captivity is dressed up as care, how often survival is mistaken for consent, and how frequently the door is visible long before we’re ready to touch it. Mohini is not an accusation. It’s an invitation — to notice the cages we’ve learned to live inside, and to remember that freedom, while frightening, was never impossible.

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Yet
Yet

This poem is a vow rather than a declaration of arrival. Yet holds space for incompletion without surrender, reframing uncertainty as movement and becoming as an ongoing act of courage. Centred on a promise made inward—to the younger, hopeful self that still believes—it insists that growth is not measured by speed or certainty, but by the refusal to quit.

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Ceasefire
Ceasefire

This poem marks a deliberate turning point: not self-love declared prematurely, but self-harm consciously ended. Ceasefire frames acceptance as a strategic decision rather than an emotional breakthrough—an agreement to stop treating the self as an enemy while acknowledging that affection may come later. It holds optimism without erasing damage, offering a vision of peace that is tentative, earned, and quietly radical: the permission to exist, unfinished, without continuing the war.

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How Alive I am Willing To Be
How Alive I am Willing To Be

How Alive I Am Willing to Be is a declaration of agency in the act of living. This poem frames aliveness not as something granted or accidental, but as a conscious choice—one that requires openness to risk, sensation, and transformation. It reflects on the tension between safety and immersion, asking what it truly costs to remain present in one’s own life. With measured intensity, the poem honours courage not as spectacle, but as the daily decision to feel deeply, move toward experience, and inhabit the world without numbing what makes it vivid. This is a meditation on choosing life fully, deliberately, and without apology.

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I Was Never Beautiful
I Was Never Beautiful

I Was Never Beautiful rejects the narrow, conditional definitions of beauty placed on women and interrogates the cost of being valued primarily for appearance. Rather than mourning what was withheld, this poem reclaims the deliberate choice to want more—to seek substance, impact, and selfhood over admiration. It speaks to the hunger to be taken seriously in a world that rewards palatability, and to the power of building an identity rooted in growth, intellect, and presence rather than something time can erode. This is a poem about choosing depth over decoration, and becoming over being seen.

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The Graveyard of Muchness
The Graveyard of Muchness

There’s a line in Alice in Wonderland where the Mad Hatter tells Alice she’s lost her muchness. I think about that a lot—how the world teaches us to tone ourselves down until we disappear into something more digestible. The Graveyard of Muchness was born from that quiet grief, from the realisation that most of us have buried our own brilliance just to be seen as reasonable. It’s about walking through the cemetery of all we’ve abandoned—our wonder, our defiance, our wild, luminous selves—and daring to listen for the laughter still echoing beneath the soil.💚

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What You Did
What You Did

There’s a particular kind of evil that hides behind comparison. The kind that says, I wasn’t as bad as them, as if that’s absolution. As if a quieter cruelty is somehow less cruel. This poem is for the one who pretended to be a bystander while their hands left marks. Who rewrote history to dodge the guilt. Who watched, who hurt, who blamed—then claimed innocence. This is not a misunderstanding. It’s a reckoning. You are not who you pretend to be. You are what you did.💚

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The Vanishing
The Vanishing

Alzheimer’s is a thief that does not break in all at once, but instead steals piece by piece—names, faces, whole chapters of a life once lived. The Vanishing is a poem I wrote while imagining what it might feel like for my mom inside her own fading world, reaching for memories that slip through her hands like ash. It is heavy with grief, laced with fear, and filled with the haunting imagery of what it means to lose yourself one memory at a time.💚

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THIS TIME, I DON’T THINK WE’RE COMING BACK
THIS TIME, I DON’T THINK WE’RE COMING BACK

I turn forty-two today, and with it comes the weight of knowing I have spent a lifetime running toward someone who was already walking away. This poem is not just a farewell—it is a reckoning, a surrender of the chase, an unflinching record of blood, betrayal, and the hollow ache of a father who chose to tie his own hands behind his back. It is the most painful gift I can give myself: resignation to the truth, finally written down.💚

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Disappearing Like Vapour
Disappearing Like Vapour

This poem is an elegy for everything we lose that never truly leaves. Disappearing Like Vapour explores the way time doesn’t erase so much as it softens, fading our moments into atmosphere—until what remains are ghosts of memory, shadows of meaning, and echoes of lives once vividly lived. It’s about walking through the present with a heart attuned to the past, feeling the pulse of history in stairwells, streets, and silences. In every place we inhabit, something once happened. Someone once was. And if we listen closely enough, we can still hear them—like breath against glass, vanishing but never gone.💚

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IF GOD IS A FATHER
IF GOD IS A FATHER

This poem is called If God Is A Father, and it’s the most personal thing I’ve ever written. It’s about the grief of losing my faith—not through rebellion or doubt, but through the example of my own father. I was taught that God is a father, and so I watched mine. And what I saw was cruelty, absence, punishment without accountability, and a love so conditional it could barely be called love at all. This poem is a reckoning. With the mythology I was handed. With the harm that was justified in His name. With the silence that still echoes. It’s not just a rejection of the God I was taught to worship—it’s a refusal to let that kind of fatherhood define what I believe in ever again.💚

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THE FAILURE OF THE FATHER GOD
THE FAILURE OF THE FATHER GOD

This next poem is called The Failure of the Father God. It’s a deliberate and direct reckoning with the concept of God as a father—a metaphor I was handed as a child, and one that never brought me comfort. In fact, it mirrored the harm I was already trying to survive. This poem isn’t subtle. It’s not meant to be. It’s for every woman who was told to kneel in gratitude while being broken, for every daughter who was asked to call silence “love,” and for anyone who has been asked to make peace with a God who looks far too much like the man who hurt them. The Failure of the Father God is not just a personal poem—it’s a refusal.💚

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This Moment Is Not My Life
This Moment Is Not My Life

There are moments that feel all-consuming—so loud, so sharp, so heavy, they try to convince us that they are all we’ll ever be. But pain is not permanence. Trauma is not identity. And what we endure does not get to decide who we become. This poem is a declaration of defiance, a reminder that we are not the worst things that have happened to us, nor the hardest things we’re facing. We are more than any single moment. We are becoming, always. And this—whatever this is—is not our whole story.💚

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What Fire Knows
What Fire Knows

We are so often taught that anger is something to suppress, something unbecoming of a woman—that to be palatable, we must be pleasant, forgiving, quiet. But anger is not the enemy. Anger is clarity. Anger is the voice that speaks when everything else has been silenced. It is the moment we stop enduring and start transforming. This poem is a reclamation of female rage—not the kind that destroys for the sake of destruction, but the kind that frees, that rebuilds, that says enough. Let this be a reminder that your anger is not shameful. It is sacred. And when they fear it, when they try to diminish it, know that they are witnessing the most dangerous thing of all: a woman no longer afraid to burn.💚

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The Sky Will Do What the Sky Does
The Sky Will Do What the Sky Does

This poem is a reckoning with release. The Sky Will Do What the Sky Does is about the futility of trying to contain someone else’s chaos—about the heartbreak of watching a storm rise in someone you once begged to be calm. It’s about learning that no matter how gentle, reasonable, or forgiving you are, you cannot rewrite the weather. You cannot turn thunder into quiet. This piece is for anyone who has exhausted themselves trying to bring peace to someone committed to destruction. It’s not about surrender—it’s about sovereignty. About stepping away from the storm, not because it has stopped, but because you finally understand: it was never yours to still.💚

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The Apostasy of Daughters
The Apostasy of Daughters

This is a poem about losing faith—not in the abstract, but in the most personal way imaginable. It is about what happens when the figure meant to protect and guide you, the one who teaches you what love and power are supposed to feel like, becomes the very source of your undoing. When religion tells us that God is a father, what does that mean for the daughters of men who abandon, wound, or destroy? The Apostasy of Daughters is not just a reckoning with belief—it is a lament, a funeral hymn for the idea of divinity as paternal. For some, disbelief is not rebellion. It is survival.🖤

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The Hurt I Didn’t Deserve
The Hurt I Didn’t Deserve

This poem is about the kind of heartbreak that doesn’t come from romance, but from absence. From someone you love not showing up when you needed them most. It’s about the silence that follows your joy, your struggle, your survival—and the person who should’ve been there, but wasn’t. I don’t know why they turned away. Maybe I never will. But the hurt is real. And so is the grief of having saved someone a seat they never planned to fill.💚

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The silence where You should be
The silence where You should be

Sometimes, sorrow doesn't come from a single moment, but from a slow and quiet accumulation—the weight of not being seen, the ache of showing up for someone who doesn’t do the same. This poem came from that place. From the grief of being present, generous, loyal… and slowly realizing you were never truly met there.💚

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The Shape of What Remains
The Shape of What Remains

Some things don’t get better. They don’t pass. They don’t transform into wisdom or gifts or meaning. Some things just happen—suddenly or slowly—and nothing is ever the same again. The Shape of What Remains is a poem about that kind of reality. The kind that doesn’t lend itself to healing arcs or tidy endings. It’s about the aftermath—the unbearable permanence of real grief, real loss, and the quiet, everyday bravery it takes to live in a world where the worst has already happened.💚

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Time Of Fatigue: Forever
Time Of Fatigue: Forever

This poem is dedicated to everyone whose default setting is “could nap at any moment,” regardless of how many hours they slept or how many electrolytes they’ve consumed. Time of Fatigue: Forever is a tribute to the deeply personal relationship I’ve developed with exhaustion—equal parts lifestyle, personality trait, and maybe a mild haunting. If you’ve ever been so tired that even your dreams need a break, welcome. You’re among your people.

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Britt Wolfe

Britt Wolfe writes emotionally devastating fiction with the precision of a heart surgeon and the recklessness of someone who definitely shouldn’t be trusted with sharp objects. Her stories explore love, loss, and the complicated mess of being human. If you enjoy books that punch you in the feelings and then politely offer you a Band-Aid, you’re in the right place.

https://bio.site/brittwolfeauthor
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