poetryA collection of 44 posts

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.

By breath and bone and fleeting trace,
I call you—
by sigh mistaken, empty space,
I call you—
by echoes caught in fraying thread,
by shadows drifting near my bed,
by scents that slither, thick with dread,
I call you.

I stitch your shape from borrowed air,
I bind you—
from splintered voice and strands of hair,
I bind you—
by vowels cracked in walls that moan,
by lullabies in fractured tone,
by dreams that rot before they’ve grown,
I bind you.

With circle drawn in dust and doubt,
I raise you—
with trembling hands and heart devout,
I raise you—
from memories blurred, decayed, and frail,
from bitter charms cursed to fail,
from grief that bends the midnight veil,
I raise you.

And for a moment—just a gleam,
I hold you—
your weightless step, a fading dream,
I hold you—
the warmth that drifts and slips below,
the phantom touch I used to know,
the scar that roots but will not grow,
I hold you.

Then by my hope that turns to ache,
I lose you—
by spells that falter anguish wakes,
I lose you—
in silence deep, where heartbeats part,
where echoes coil and shadows start,
again, again—my quiet art,
to lose you.

If time were clay that offered me a chance
To shape anew the path that brought me here,
To mould it would undo the sorrows past,
Yet lose the wonders sorrow made more dear.

The flaws I bore have ripened into grace,
The joys I gather bloomed from mire and thorn;
Erase one pain, and light would lose its place—
The stem would wither where the fruit was born.

My memories hold both light and bitter strains,
Twined by a fate that spun them into thread;
I’d keep the ache that scorched through joys and pains,
For losing loss would leave my marvels dead.

The roots of anguish feed the blooms of worth—
For wonder thrives where hardship scars the earth.

Took my meds and checked the chat
Someone’s wife just shaved her head
Someone else says, “Fuck this fog.”
Missed her kid’s school thing again
Marked the day but still forgot
Wrote it down in three damn apps

Tried to clean. Forgot I started
Filled the sink and walked away
Area rugs need a shake
Clam inside, I don’t unfold
Some days offer only brine
Some days hold a hidden pearl

Still, the group chat’s making jokes
Someone found a lace-trimmed robe
Says she aced it at her scan
Says she’s claiming glam as spite
We don’t talk about the ones
We don’t see in chat again

Hope feels sharp and soft at once
Some days, even teas taste wrong
Wife says, “Baby, rest is real.”
So I call that getting things done
Some days I just hare off after
Something I forgot to want