Something Beautiful After

I didn’t expect to want again. Touch had become a memory, a ghost I nodded to in passing—familiar, but too far.

Then you walked in like a secret I didn’t know I was still allowed to want. Not loud. Not demanding. Just sure.

Your hands didn’t ask questions—they knew answers. Like they’d waited their whole life
to map this skin I’d buried under silence.

You kissed me like it wasn’t a reward, but a right—like you’d earned it just by seeing me
and staying.
Staying when I trembled.
Staying when I burned.

This isn’t a rebound.
This is a rise.

There’s something holy in how you undress me—not just my body, but the layers I kept hidden even from myself.

With you, it isn’t just passion—it’s permission.

To want.
To ache.
To feel everything again.
Lips like an offering.
Fingers like truth.
Breathless doesn’t mean broken anymore.

You don’t heal me—you remind me I’m already healing. That I’m not ruined, I’m ripe.

And now—now I know the difference between being needed and being wanted.
And God, you want me. Like fire wants air. Like night wants skin. Like I want you—with everything I was once afraid to give.

© 2025 Shawn Oen. All rights reserved.

In These Halls

In these halls, every breath is a treasure,
counted out in beeps and soft alarms,
fragile as glass,
yet held with the strength of a thousand hands.

Nurses lean close,
doctors bend their voices toward hope,
families press prayers into the silence.
Here, life is bargained for—
one more dawn,
one more chance to open your eyes.

Each heartbeat is proof
that existence is sacred,
that time cannot be bought,
only borrowed.

Some, when their own light flickers,
leave behind gifts—
a kidney, a heart, a promise
that another may go on breathing,
another may laugh again in the sunlight.
In this way, one life
multiplies into many.

And when the chart closes,
when the name becomes a pop-up
on a screen too small to hold a life,
still the truth endures:
every moment mattered.
Every smile, every touch, every breath—
precious beyond measure,
never to be taken for granted.

In these halls,
we are reminded daily
that living is the rarest miracle,
and that love,
woven through struggle,
is what keeps the world alive.

© 2025 Shawn Oen. All rights reserved.

The Quiet Work of Love

The alarm rings early, and I rise,
not for myself, but for a boy
who waits on frozen ice,
for wheels that spin on mountain trails,
for talks that stitch together
the quiet fabric of his growing years.

I lace my days with yardwork,
laundry folded into small monuments,
meals stirred with weary hands,
floors swept of dust but never of love.
This is not martyrdom—
this is the quiet work of love,
done without scoreboard or applause.

Two hours of highway each day,
time I cannot keep for myself,
yet I give it anyway,
trading silence and solitude
for a roof, for stability, for him.
Even as another close,
instead of seeing the cost,
found fault where there should be thanks,
complaints where there should be quiet respect.

My mind bears the shadows
of serving a flag,
tasks unspoken,
memories locked behind the ribs,
yet I return to serve again—
in hospitals, at bedsides,
for a quarter-century of need.

The cost is high:
free time surrendered,
health strained,
a self worn thin like old denim.
But if you ask why I give,
the answer is simple—
because love does not keep score,
does not call itself a sacrifice.

It is a father’s way:
to hold the weight of the world,
even when another refuses to see it,
so his son may carry only his dreams.

© 2025 Shawn Oen. All rights reserved.

This Blessed Sip of Life

“Hello, how are you doing today
I hope I find you feeling healthy”—
your smile broke like spring after too long a winter.
We met by chance,
but it felt like gravity had drawn us in.

“Could I love you? Could you love me?”
The world held its breath.
Your laugh said yes before your mouth ever did.

“Say, my love, I came to you with best intention
You laid down to give to me just what I’m seeking.”
And you did.
So I asked,
“Kiss me, won’t you kiss me now?”
Because I wanted to give you everything and asked for nothing in return. Other than joy.

We stitched our lives together with whispered promises.
“Hold my hands, your hands—
So much we have dreamed.”
Your hand in mine,
the future felt like a secret only we understood.

“Oh, please, lover, lay down
Spend this time with me.”
And we did,
under stars that blinked in approval.

Children came.
And laughter.
And little hockey skates by the door.
“Celebrate we will
Because life is short but sweet for certain.”

We were a painting in motion,
“Our love is so right—
Forget the clouds that rain down on you.”
Two of us. Anything felt possible.
“Two of us together, we could do anything, baby.”

But time speaks in silence.
One day, I noticed the pause between our words.
“You could look inside and see what’s on my mind
I let you down, oh, forgive me.”

I did try.
You did too.
But something between us shifted.
The PTSD became too much and we didn’t know how to navigate.

“You crush me, with the things you do,
and I do, for you, anything too.”
That balance turned to burden.
If only we had worked on our mental fitness rather than turning on each other.

“I fall so hard inside the idea of you,”
not you—
not anymore.

“Wanna stay but I think I’m gettin’ outta here.”
And you did. And so have I.

“Everybody asks me how she’s doing
Since she went away
I said I couldn’t tell you
I’m OK, I’m OK.”
But I wasn’t.

I replay the good days
like old home videos.
“Ride my bike down the old dirt hill
First time without my training wheels.
First time I kissed you I lost my legs—
Bring that beat back to me again.”

“I know I’ll miss her later
Wish I could bend my love to hate her.”
But I never could.

“This blessed sip of life, is it not enough?”
Some days, it feels like it is.
Other days, I drink it down bitterly.

“And we were so much younger
Hard to explain that we are stronger.”
But we are.
Just not together anymore.

“Stay, beautiful baby
I hope you stay, American baby.”
You didn’t.
But I hope you found whatever you were looking for….
So many words unsaid.

“And if I don’t see you
I’m afraid we’ve lost the way.”
Maybe we have.

But still,
“I shall miss these things.”
The laughter in your eyes.
The weight of your head on my shoulder.
The silence between our words.

“Lovely lady, I am at your feet, oh God I want you so badly.
And I wonder—this: could tomorrow be so wondrous as you there sleeping?”
It once was.

And though
“I let you down—
How could I be such a fool like me?”
I carry no bitterness.
Only love.
Faded, but still honest.

“But I do know one thing—
And that’s where you are, is where I belong.”
Was.

And maybe
that’s enough.

© 2025 Shawn Oen. All rights reserved.

Sammy the Schnoodle

You came with no warning, a bundle of curls,
Eyes wide with wonder, docked tail in soft swirls.
She handed you gently, then kissed me goodbye—
Duty called her, across desert sky.

I didn’t expect you, wasn’t quite sure.
A leash, a crate, p ee on the floor.
But silence was heavy the moment she left,
And your little heart filled in the cleft.

We wandered the streets in the hush of the night,
Learning each other in dim porchlight.
You’d tilt your head like you understood,
Each broken thought, each mood, each “should.”

Endless walks down familiar roads,
You guarding my heart in quiet code.
Car rides like therapy, windows rolled down,
You made me smile when all felt drowned.

Then the day the bridge gave way to the sky,
Steel and screams, sirens that cry.
You sat by my side, unshaken, aware—
A grounding soul in thick, shaken air.

Through fear and rubble, through grief and the news,
You offered your silence, your nonjudging views.
No medal, no words, just your paw on my knee,
Reminding me gently, “You still have me.”

Seasons turned slow, then eighteen months gone,
She came back to find us, bonded and strong.
Not just a pet, but a part of my core,
The quiet teacher who opened the door.

Because of you, I learned how to stay,
To love without words, to show up each day.
You softened my edges, you taught me to bend,
Prepared me for fatherhood, friend to the end.

Now when I hold my child in the hush of the night,
I remember our walks, the streetlamp light.
Sammy the Schnoodle, unplanned but true—
The gift I didn’t know I needed was you.

© 2025 Shawn Oen. All rights reserved.

Two Wheels, One Heart (Almost)

I dreamed of roads not walked but wheeled,
Of gravel paths and tires sealed,
Of sunlit mornings side by side,
You, and me, on a morning bike ride.

I’d speak in tones both sweet and bold,
Of frames in purple and gears of gold,
“A bike that’s built with you in mind—
Se xy, safe, fast…a rare design.”

I pictured trips with maps unrolled,
Family tours through fields and corn,
Picnics packed and tires spinning,
Memories made, the whole clan grinning.

But your eyes never matched my pace,
No spark, no thrill lit up your face.
You’d gently smile—or just say no,
And let the hope fall soft as snow.

You turned me down, again, again,
My offers met with cool refrain.
My Hail Mary: “A gym?” I asked. “Yoga?”
You shook your head, just told me no.

I bargained dreams, I begged, I tried,
But saw the truth you couldn’t hide.
This wasn’t yours—it’s mine alone,
No shared pursuit, just me, wind-blown.

So I let go the tandem view,
Strapped on my shoes, chased skies of blue.
With friends I ride, with legs set free,
But still, I’d wished you’d ride with me.

Some passions bloom, some seeds don’t grow—
Love makes space to let that show.
And though you’re not beside my wheel,
I ride on strong. I ride and heal.

© 2025 Shawn Oen. All rights reserved.

Bay One
HCMC Stabilization Unit

We stand in the bays where chaos lands first,
Where sirens deliver the battered and cursed,
Where blood speaks louder than words can shout,
And the line between life and death plays out.

The worst that humans do with their hands—
Steel, fists, gravity, bullets—no one understands.
A look in their eyes, sometimes blank, sometimes wild,
Sometimes it’s a man, sometimes it’s a child.

We patch what we can in fluorescent light,
Hold back the dark with our gloves pulled tight.
A breath returned is a battle won,
But the war? It’s never truly done.

Some come in screaming, some come pleading,
Some carried by hate, some swallowed by pills.
We don’t ask why—it’s not ours to know—
We just press and suture, and tell them, “Go.”

And then they come back—again, again,
Same wounds reopened, same cycle of pain.
Sometimes we see hope; sometimes just delay.
Sometimes we wonder why we stay.

But in between the screams and moans,
We witness the soul rebuilding its bones.
A girl who wakes, a heart that beats,
A mother’s cry when her boy finds his feet.

We see resurrection in the smallest spark—
A touch, a blink, a pulse in the dark.
And still, the ones we mend may fall,
But that doesn’t make our work small.

This place is heavy with what it holds—
The truth of the world, both savage and bold.
We clean the wounds of a broken street,
And sometimes, just barely, make it beat.

So if you ask how we carry this weight,
The violence, the cycles, the edge of fate—
We don’t have answers, just blood and breath,
And the stubborn will to wrestle death.

In Bay One, Two, Three, and Four… where the broken descend,
We’re not just healers—we’re witnesses, friends.
And though they may return, and return once more,
We’ll be here still, behind the secure door.

© 2025 Shawn Oen. All rights reserved