poetryA collection of 41 posts

Author’s note: Learning Czech is like…

We started with coffee and a casual clause.
Then you slipped into instrumental—
and I never recovered.

You’re the kind of language
that undresses slowly—
case by case,
stripping structure till I’m bare,
unsure what I’m allowed to carry.

You’re always just outside my lines.
I beg in the present tense—
but you only finish
in future perfect.

I used to flirt in French—
no strings, no syntax.
But you expect agreement
in every position.
And when I get it wrong,
you correct me—
say I’m only animate
when the case demands it.

You said you wanted space—
but still required the right tone.
I tried to meet you halfway,
you scrambled the word order
and said it was poetry.

You said you don’t mind taking the lead—
but you still insist on second position.
And G-d forbid I come before the clitic.

You’re soft consonants with hard limits,
and half your meaning’s always implied.
Every time I think I’ve cracked your code,
you shift the stress mid-word—
make me unvoice myself to match you.

I fell for your false friends,
got intimate with idioms
that meant nothing you said they did.
You whispered sweet nothings
with a softened ď—
then proofread my sigh.

I dream in declension tables,
whisper moans in conditional,
Wake up misaligned
and try not to cry.

But I’m in too deep.
I’ve stopped resisting your structure,
declined every soft boundary you gave me—
and still,
I keep hoping
you’ll inflect me right.

Lick the slip of it—peach-slick, spun.
Let plump pulse press on soft lip.
Murmur the vowel: round, ripe, low.
Teeth tease juice from golden syllable skin.
This line swells thick with sugar-sound.
Melt it slow in your mouth’s heat.
Gloss drips down through glottal grit.
Sweetness spills in secret sibilants.
You buzz, half-full of honey.
Swallow. Your tongue wants more.

Sometimes
I watch her watching me,
wonder-struck, wavering,
and let myself imagine
the country conjured behind those eyes—
softened by sunrise, soaked golden with grace,
assembled from galaxies
she gently gathers
in the gravity of her gaze.

In that vision,
I am radiant,
woven from whispered reveries,
rippling slowly toward shorelines
I've yet to know—
fiercely luminous,
silver pools of moonlight spilled
onto sleeping skin;
amber sun slipping slow
through morning windows,
warming the edges of fragile dreams.

She calls me brilliant,
the word not flattery
but inevitability—
like dawn drawn softly
from night's embrace,
starlight retracing
constellations we forgot
we carried under ribs, behind eyes,
beneath tongues shy with blessings.

In the hush of her mouth
brilliant is balm, blessing—
a breath I breathe deeply, syllable-soft,
sound sculpted into sacredness,
spoken into valleys
I had once mistakened for shame.
Her voice silk, steady certainty,
morning rain melody rinsing
the hidden salts behind lashes.

I hunger—
oh, how I hunger—
to step fully, finally,
into skin she stitches gently
with each lingering look:
my shape mended whole
beneath patient eyes,
wounds quietly rewoven
with silken strength
threaded through unwavering faith.

To her eyes,
I am already everything
I yearn toward—
joy softening borders,
tenderness blooming bravely,
grief lovingly loosened
by fingers steady,
graceful, careful, sure.

She imagines me
crafting poems with healing hands,
meaning made from broken pieces,
lines of light spun gently through fractured porcelain,
easing ruin into veins of gold—
wonder shining where scars once lived.

And because she sees,
I grow braver, brighter—
cradling uncertain courage,
speaking quietly in rooms
that once stole breath and voice.
Sentences reshaped gently
by the soft arc of her smile—
words warm against ribs
as ripples of perpetual yes:
Yes, you can; Yes, you are; Yes, you will.

In her nearness
I cradle hope
like something holy,
uncertainties smoothed
with palms kinder than prayer,
insecurities carefully coaxed
back toward beauty—
each doubt retold
line by forgiving line,
a gentler scripture
inked softly
with honey-slow syllables
that only her mouth
can make truth.

And when I falter, fade
towards shadow,
she cups my face,
her touch a tender question
already answered—
palms tracing maps
of vulnerability,
fear feathered carefully
into forgiveness,
fingertips patient, knowing
the careful weight of what they hold.

In that silent, sacred space,
I am remade,
again, ever again—
reflection softened
into landscapes of seeing;
grace layered over grace,
each heartbeat offered freely
to that hymn
of seeing and being seen

Until I no longer distinguish
the woman I dreamed
in her vision
from the woman breathing softly now,
palms pressed gently
to the quiet rise of her chest,
claiming brilliance
with every heartbeat, steady and sure.

The miracle of her gaze
has taught me
exactly how.

You’re not going to be ready.
Not when it happens—
not when he arrives,
not when you hold the test in your shaking hand,
thinking you did everything right,
not realizing yet that you did.

He will be the right thing anyway.
The best thing.
The realest.

You’ll become someone you didn’t plan to be—
a mother with cereal in her bra
and lullabies tangled in her hair.
You’ll love him so hard
you’ll forget to love yourself for a while.
That’s okay.

You’ll get married.
It will feel like building something solid.
For a while it will be,
and then it won’t.
When he gets sick—
when your world tilts—
you will try to hold on to it all,
and end up cradling only absence.

Some things just break—
even the ones you build
out of all of that you are.

You’ll walk out of that life
carrying his blanket
and a version of yourself
you won’t recognize.

There will be years
where joy feels like cheating.

You’ll find it anyway,
everywhere.
You’re good at that.

One day,
you’ll fall in love with someone
who doesn’t need to be your first anything.
She’ll only want anything you can give.

You’ll meet her in a country
where you don’t know the words yet.
She’ll wait while you learn.
She’ll call you clever
when you don’t feel that way.

You’ll tell her everything.
All of it.
She will cherish all of you—
even the parts you thought
that no one could want.

And then—
after the scans,
after the doctor says the word
that splits you in two again,
that already took everything once—
you’ll ask if she still wants you.

She’ll say yes—
not because she doesn’t understand,
but because she does.

You’ll ask:
Even when I get sicker?
Even if I don’t make it long?
Even if we never have a child of our own?

She'll say:
Yes.
Still yes.
Always yes.

You won’t go back to the girl you are now,
but you’ll carry her with you.
You’ll find her sometimes.
In the way you still smile at flowers
in sidewalk cracks.
In how it still makes you cry
when someone is kind to a stranger.

You—me—we,
we will keep surviving,
but not just staying—
We will keep becoming
someone worth surviving for.

Day 4
She turned down the radio when a child sang.
Didn’t say why,
But her fingers curled against her thigh
like they were remembering
how to hold a smaller hand.
I didn’t ask.
I just watched her breathe through it—
like someone trying not to wake a ghost.

Day 36
There’s a frog sticker on her laptop.
She says it’s been there for years.
I say it’s peeling.
She says, “I know.”
Her voice goes low—
the way it does
when he’s just passed through her memory,
muddy shoes and all.

Day 77
She took out an old shirt
tucked in the back of a drawer.
Didn’t wear it,
just held it,
knees to chest,
like it wasn’t done holding him.
I made tea,
sat beside her.
She leaned in without speaking.

Day 98
She never looks at a schoolyard—
not directly, anyway—
but when a bell rings,
her posture changes.
Her hand finds mine,
and I don’t speak.
We walk until the sound thins,
until we’re somewhere quieter,
where memory can’t echo
in the laughter of children.

Day 130
She said his name
like a match being struck.
Quiet, but unmistakable.
She gave it to me
like a fragile thing.
I held it with both hands.
Promised not to drop it.
She watched me
like she almost believed I wouldn’t.

Day 158
She laughed at something I said,
then bit her lip.
“Sorry,” she whispered.
“I just… he would’ve liked you.”
I kissed her knuckles.
She didn’t cry,
just stared at the ceiling
like it held his face
in its haphazard patterns.

Day 163
I asked if she thought
he would’ve liked Prague.
She said he loved bridges,
that he hated soup,
and he never learned to whistle.
I listened.
That night,
she didn’t dream of him,
but I think I did—for both of us.

Day 208
She showed me a photo—
not of him,
but of her,
holding him.
Smiling without looking at the lens.
I told her she looked
like someone building a shelter
with her own body.
She said, “I tried.”
And I said, “You did.”

The cold won’t quit.

April spits warmth, then slips
back into bone-gnawing wind—
sinks its teeth in again,
all bite, no bloom.

We talked about a garden—
just talked—
named nothing, planted less.
We only circled the edges of it,
a maybe in the mouth,
a soft someday shared between
laundry folds and passing glances,
the dare to hope.

This cold, though—
this cling, this sting
that won’t lift—
makes the dream ache different.
What if we try
and time cuts in?
What if we don’t
and the wanting never stills?

I know what loss does—
how it threads silence through
a childhood.
How absence can echo
longer than presence.
Is it fair to risk becoming
a question they never stop asking?

Even the bulbs
beneath this frostbit earth
are fools for the sun.
They don’t wait for certainty.
No, they split, they risk,
they bloom bruised and early.

Maybe it’s not about fair—
Maybe it’s about fierce.
Maybe dreaming is
the thing we get to keep
when nothing else is sure.

The cold doesn’t decide.
I can still want,
still wonder,
still whisper names
we haven’t chosen yet
into the not-yet air.

Even if we don’t plant,
even if it never takes—
there’s beauty in the reach.
In the hands that hold
the maybe.