Emotional Poetry & Short Verse

She left in October.

Didn’t say goodbye.

Didn’t leave a note.

Just vanished.

Like fog when the sun insists on waking the hills.

I still remember her handwriting.

Slanted.

Impatient.

The way she dotted her i’s like they were apologies.

I remember the last cup of tea she made.

Chamomile.

Two sugars.

Still warm when I found it.

Still trembling in the mug,

like it had been left in a rush.

Her name was Mara.

It means bitter.

But she tasted like honey when she laughed.

And she laughed with her whole chest.

Threw her head back.

Closed her eyes.

Laughed like it could fix the world.

I used to write poems in the margins of her sketchbook.

Little lines.

Unfinished thoughts.

Like:

“Your eyes are winter,

and I’m learning how to love the cold.”

or

“You draw storms,

but you forget to draw the shelter.”

She always smiled at them.

Always ignored them.

Like they were feathers drifting past a locked window.

When she left,

I thought it was my fault.

I thought maybe I should’ve written louder.

Maybe I should’ve drawn a door in her storm.

The town said she was unstable.

Said she was dramatic.

Said she was chasing some kind of wildness no one could define.

I said nothing.

Because I knew she hated cages.

Even the kind built from concern.

Two months after she disappeared,

I got a letter.

No return address.

No punctuation.

Just seven words:

"I loved you, but I couldn’t stay."

I read it until the paper curled at the edges.

Until the ink felt like it was whispering instead of screaming.

Until I memorized her sorrow like it was scripture.

Mara had a favorite tree in the hills behind the town.

A crooked birch,

bent like it had listened to too many secrets.

She carved a crescent moon into its bark the first summer we met.

Said it was her promise to always return.

I go there still.

Every October.

Sit under that moon scar.

Wait for the wind to carry her name.

Last year, I brought her sketchbook.

The one she never finished.

I wrote in the margins again:

“If you were the storm,

I was the match trying to stay lit.”

A girl from the city passed by once and asked me,

“Why are you sitting out here all alone?”

And I said,

“I’m not alone.

I’m just with someone who’s invisible today.”

She looked at me like I was broken.

Maybe I am.

Mara used to say grief is a language people forget how to speak.

So we stutter in silence.

Translate absence into habits.

I now stir my tea counterclockwise.

Just like she did.

I listen to the songs she hated,

because they hurt less than the ones she loved.

There’s a boy in town who reminds me of her.

He draws birds with broken wings.

Says he doesn’t believe in flying things anymore.

I told him once,

“Draw her anyway.”

He asked,

“What if I forget her face?”

I said,

“Draw the feeling.

Faces fade.

But feelings—

they echo.”

Some nights, I dream she’s returned.

Always barefoot.

Always carrying something strange—

like a book full of invisible ink

or a glass jar with her laughter inside.

In the dream,

she looks at me and says,

“You didn’t break me.

I was born cracked.”

And I cry.

Even in sleep.

I wrote a poem this morning.

Folded it into a paper bird.

Left it in the hollow of her birch tree.

It read:

“I will stop waiting for you

when the stars forget your name.

Until then,

I am here—

between hope and memory,

a breath held forever.”

People tell me to move on.

To let her go.

But they don’t know

that she still lives in every quiet thing:

in the hush before a thunderstorm,

in the curve of handwriting on napkins,

in the smell of oranges in winter.

She’s not gone.

Not really.

She’s just

misplaced.

Like a sentence I forgot to finish.

Like a ghost

who forgot she was allowed to come home.