White Space Where You Wait
Wonderland Challenge Day 20
This poem is about white not as absence, but as potential, a glowing, waiting stillness.
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The textbook glows beneath my cheek like pressed snow,
its words cold as frost, brittle as chalk outlines of thoughts I’m meant to memorise,
but my mind slips sideways, adrift in the soft hush of your name I never say aloud.
You are ivory in my half-dreams, not blank but luminous,
like the silence between pages when meaning still hovers but hasn’t landed,
like breath on a winter window that doesn’t fog because the air is too still.
I try to study the answers, to underline certainty,
but my hand wanders, sketching your eyes into the margins,
each line a pulse I only feel when I stop trying to understand and just know.
You are the white space between questions,
the part no one asks about because it’s too honest,
the feeling of having held someone’s gaze long enough
to know the shape of their heart without ever needing to ask.
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About the Creator
Diane Foster
I’m a professional writer, proofreader, and all-round online entrepreneur, UK. I’m married to a rock star who had his long-awaited liver transplant in August 2025.
When not working, you’ll find me with a glass of wine, immersed in poetry.
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Comments (2)
To know without asking the fullness beyond any telling the shape of another's heart by sheer power of tender observation. Quite a gift for both parties to the communication.
You are the white space between questions - lovely line! I love the idea of white, a blank page, a blank canvas, as a metaphor for potential. It works really well.