Elegy
I Think of You When
You were not a mistake. You needed to happen. I think of you whenever I avoid doing the dishes I worry about what touches my mouth I keep pajamas under my sheets and outside clothes on top I think about sleeping next to someone else I want to get married I flirt with someone I’m not supposed to I want a partner - for all that we pretended we were for all I wanted you to be I avoid others by being in the bathroom for too long I want a bridal party I see brides being supported on their wedding day I think of being without you in this city, even as antagonists I think of being with someone for the rest of my life - for all we convinced ourselves it would be us I go to physical therapy I don’t have anyone to watch true crime with I do sleep next to someone I don’t want to be touched I want quiet time to myself on Saturday mornings Someone asks me the last time I visited my alma mater I am grateful for my peace I am grateful for my freedom I don’t want to waste time I am happy to go out and dance my own way I kiss who I want I am not afraid to show affection in public I wonder if I am regretful I do not regret I tell others “you can say congratulations“ I remember the secrets we know about each other that I will never speak again I post my writings that are about someone else - even if it’s not always about you As I wonder how long this poem will take to feel complete As I struggle through getting rid of the tightness in my throat. I see new facial hair I walk around where we used to live in bliss I look incredibly happy next to someone in a picture I think about how you don’t know anything about my life now - not the people who love me, where I work, where I live, how long my hair is I am free I am grateful Loved ones give me advice I like someone’s laugh I wonder if you remember to check in on my websites that you wanted me to warn you about I am hyper aware of waking up in a much smaller bed with no room for anyone else I think of what I thought love was I am grateful someone thinks I am worth the inconvenience of picking me up at the airport themselves My brain blocks out things Someone suggests Joshua Tree I think of putting a bumper sticker on my car and decide against it I pray I think about how much I used to travel - how much I used to sacrifice I am grateful for a better relationship with my parents I don’t hide things anymore I am no longer trapped by my empathy for you When someone else has a migraine and I am grateful mine stopped.
By Ariana GonBonabout a month ago in Poets
Family Recovery
Negative Space challenge: The Prompt - Write a poem shaped by what's missing. Let an absence, omission, or empty space become as important as what you put on the page. Negative space is what surrounds the subject. In a poem, it can be silence, omission, white space, or the thing the speaker refuses to name. Write a poem shaped by what's missing. Maybe it's a person who never appears, a word you keep avoiding, a gap in a memory, or something the reader can feel without ever being told directly. Use form, line breaks, repetition, restraint, or even the space on the page itself to make that absence felt. Whatever approach you choose, the emptiness should do real work in the poem.
By Denise E Lindquistabout a month ago in Poets
What we still have
The love we had for those short years, most people won’t get in a lifetime. There’s an emptiness now, lingering beneath my happiness, quiet, the way a bitterness tastes sweet, only to us. I catch myself reaching for you, my hand going to an empty side of the bed, or lighting a candle at church, in a life, wide and unfamiliar. My kids are getting older on the years I still get to have, and they might think I’m sad because you’re gone, but I feel you in all of them— in the shape of a nose, in a curve of a smile, a stubbornness I used to fight in you and now just call their father’s. I don't cry the way I used to. It's smaller than that— it's setting the table for one less plate it's your song in the car, it’s the number five showing up in obscure places, it’s old photographs still on the shelf. Only a few find that kind of love, amid the ordinary noise of years. Others spend their whole lives looking but it never comes. A negative space in my soul, now a second room in the house of me — door always slightly open, light from all the joy I’ve built since, still finding its way in, but even on the good days, or the settled ones, I am never standing in a house that’s fully lit.
By tatiana vitasabout a month ago in Poets
Popham in October
The beach is quieter now. Summer has slipped away like a gull lifting off without a sound. Only the steady pulse of the Atlantic remains, a heartbeat older than anything I know. I sit where the tide curls in, letting the cold sand hold me like an old friend.
By Syl De'Vilabout a month ago in Poets
October Breakwater
October is a breakwater you step onto, slick stone and salt breath rising from the Atlantic’s throat. The air tastes like cold pine and the ghosts of summer bonfires. The tide pulls back, revealing the long ribs of the sandbar— a road the ocean only allows for part of the day.
By Syl De'Vilabout a month ago in Poets
