Poems for Burnout, When You’ve Got Nothing Left

It isn’t dramatic. That’s the part nobody warns you about. The morning is flat and grey, the coffee does nothing, and the task that used to take ten minutes sits there looking back at you like a wall. You are not sad, exactly. You are running on empty, going through the motions, doing the day with the part of you that’s still able to lift things. These are seven short poems for burnout — not a plan to refill the tank, not a list of ways to fix it by Monday, just a few quiet lines to read when there’s nothing left to give the page. Read one. The rest will keep.

Seven poems for burnout

One — The Empty Tank

The needle is on the line
where there is nothing left to spend.
You are not lazy.
You are not broken.
You are a thing that ran
a long time on very little,
and the little is gone.

Two — The Flat Grey Morning

The light comes up the same as ever
and lands on you like weather.
No color in it, no edge.
You don’t have to make today bright.
Let it be grey.
Grey is a thing a morning is allowed to be.

Three — The Task That Used to Be Easy

It sits there, small, and will not move,
and you used to lift it without looking.
That you was rested.
This you is not.
The task can wait for hands
that have something in them again.

Four — Going Through the Motions

You showed up. You did the steps.
You moved the day from one end to the other
with your face on.
That is not nothing.
On a day like this,
the motions are what carry you.

Five — Lower the Bar

The bar was set by a stronger week.
You can take it down
to where your hands actually reach.
Done badly is still done.
Half is still more than none.
Let small be the size of today.

Six — The Body Knows First

It went quiet before you noticed —
the slow mornings, the heavy arms,
the way the coffee stopped working.
It was not asking nicely anymore.
It was telling you.
You are allowed to listen.

Seven — Empty Is a Place, Not a Verdict

Empty is where the tank is now.
It is not who you are.
Tanks fill slowly, on their own time,
when the engine is finally off.
You don’t have to refill tonight.
You only have to stop running.

A short reflection

There is no order to read these in, and no number you have to reach. One short poem, read slowly on a flat morning, can give the attention something quieter to lean on than the long list it cannot face. Burnout doesn’t lift on a schedule, and these lines won’t make it. But they will sit with you while it does. If you wake tomorrow and it’s grey again, the page is still here.

If the week is heavier than a poem can hold, it is okay to reach for a real person, too — a friend, a doctor, someone whose voice you trust. Quiet lines are good company, and they are not the only kind.

If you would like a few of these to keep, the free reading is here — short poems and a five-minute audio reading in one calm voice, for the next morning the tank reads empty. And if you have been giving more than you had for a long while, Rest Is the Resistance holds more, read aloud the same way.

A note from the Library: these poems are short on purpose. They are meant to be returned to, not finished. — Zen Roots, published by Ledgerstone Press.