Melissou 29
I whisper your name between sips of coffee,
fold you into the linen I hang in the Athenian sun.
Sometimes I imagine your laughter echoing
down these unfamiliar streets,
filled with noise and orange blossoms.
You are not stepping on marble,
not in the future which I nurture
like my olive tree rooted in Cycladic stone.
You will not walk through the doorway,
or fall in love with the sight of Kallimarmaro
and the evening warmth.
And yet,
somehow,
you are the reason I got here.
I want you to know,
this life I am shaping
with clay-stained hands and a tired heart,
I am making it beautiful,
the way you might have done.
And a shimmer of what could have been
still brushes my skin,
a sting of golden light
clinging to salt-kissed arms.
May 29, 2025
Written by Bianca Bauer
Grief
It broke you –
not with thunder,
but with the sound of a door
that would never open again.
The room stayed the same,
but nothing inside made sense.
You screamed once,
then forgot how.
Now grief isn’t loud anymore.
It sits like dust
in the corners of rooms no one enters.
The storm passed –
but it left salt in the floorboards,
a silence that sticks to your skin.
And still,
you listen
for something
that no longer echoes.
May 6, 2025
Written by Bianca Bauer
The Woman
She doesn’t arrive all at once.
She spills slowly –
like warm light across bare skin,
like a petal blossoming
before it falls.
There is a scent to her –
wild and moist,
salt and rose and iron.
She is velvet red
and bleeding gold,
roaring beneath her stillness.
Untamed.
Honey-smooth and
Moon-touched.
She asks for nothing,
yet you offer everything.
Not to be emptied –
but to be opened.
May 18, 2025
Written by Bianca Bauer
The Shedding
The Past
You keep returning
to the room upstairs –
where the wallpaper peels
in the shape of scar tissue.
Boxes sealed with names
you still, somehow, answer to.
Everything is wrapped up and preserved,
and the dust hovers – soft, weightless, patient.
The air is thick with longing,
but nothing stirs.