New Adult Mystery and Adventure Novelist in Progress
it was summer,
you were warm.
I never wanted perfect,
you knew that.
someday, you’ll know
how all these poems, they’re all for you,
and you’ll apologize.
and I’ll say it’s nothing,
it’s just a poem.
I’m just in love with you,
I don’t have feelings for you.
You couldn’t give me the time of day,
but I wear a watch anyway.
You weren’t there when I needed you,
but truth be told I never needed you.
I needed you in the way I need coffee before bed.
You could be fun for a night,
but I’ll wish I slept instead.
Note: I found this poem I had written a while ago in an old notebook.
It doesn’t hurt anymore;
I loved you once and I love you still,
but the wind blows different these days.
I worry some days, though,
I’ll never love like I once did,
but I do still love,
it’s just different now.
I love the ocean,
I love big open fields,
I love snowfall when all my plans involve staying in.
But will I ever love another person
as purely as I once loved you?
And do I want to?
/Bonus Haiku\
It stopped hurting and
I felt something in me change.
I can breathe again.
Fresh frost coats the ground,
people dressed in coats and scarves
shiver and speed-walk to their cars.
Take one step outside,
any grogginess felt before disappears
behind the crisp December air.
Some heat up their car and go back inside,
some didn’t plan that far ahead
and instead shiver on their way to work,
and by the time they get to work
they refuse to leave the furnace they’ve created.
Two workers greet each other with a friendly,
“It’s too cold,”
while the other retorts,
“It’s too early!”
They both take sips of their hot drink,
sigh, and walk into their workplace.
The retail ship is decorated for Christmas,
but no workers have any Christmas cheer left.
The winter snow told me to relax,
things will work out,
just give it time.
And if it’s not okay,
have a cup of tea
and a warm blanket.
Spring will be here
and you’ll be good again.
Winters are for hibernating,
growing and healing.
But then why,
I ask myself,
do I always break down
when winter comes around?
I do miss it sometimes.
I miss the closeness,
I miss the warm feeling-
I’ve been so cold lately.
I fear, as I always do
that I won’t feel it again.
I’m destined for a life
of freezing, bitter winds.
But I’m tired of killing myself
over people who aren’t
worth a scratch or a scrape.
So, I’ll risk the bitter winds,
because I won’t freeze over
and someday I’ll find
someone worth dying for.
It felt like drowning,
yet no one could pull me out of the water.
It felt like a pressure on my chest,
but I was alone in this room.
Once it felt like a burning in my heart,
the kind that made me smile for days on end.
Then it felt like drowning again,
mixed with fire and all I could see was you.
It felt like years,
before I could smile like I once did,
but then I did again,
and it felt like floating.
I miss the feeling,
that feeling of being at home
with you.
The only problem is
there is no
you.
There is only
me
and what good does it do
when it’s late
and I’m freezing over?
My sheets don’t suffice
when all my dreams
are of your cold, bitter winds.
Came back from the dead,
treaded a fine line between
thriving and rotting.
I don’t usually do haikus, but I was writing this while doing warm ups and I liked it, so here it is.
The chill in the air,
the calm winter snow,
tells me I’ll be okay.
And if not today,
soon.
The leafless trees
and the desolate dirt trail,
now shrouded in white
and slowing down travelers.
Life stops in the winter
and lets me breathe.
I’d never met a morning I liked
until I met a northern winter morning.
The comfortable silence,
the perpetual, still air.
I glance outside
and I regain a part of me I once lost.
Lauren Hayden 