When She Comes

I am young, with restless fire,
A heart that hums with soft desire.
Not for games or passing thrills,
But for the one who quiets chills.

I walk through nights with open eyes,
Beneath the stars, beneath the skies.
Watching, waiting, soul in bloom,
For her to step into the room.

Not just beauty, though I dream
Of eyes that hold a secret gleam—
But grace, and laughter rich and free,
A voice that sings in sync with me.

I’ve seen the echoes, danced with ghosts,
Loved too fast and lost the most.
But I believe—no need to chase,
She’ll find me in the perfect place.

I’ll know her not by just her face,
But by the calm she brings to space.
A presence warm, a touch sincere,
The kind that pulls your future near.

She’ll ask for truth, not clever lines,
She’ll match the rhythm in my signs.
And when she speaks, the world will dim—
The noise will fade, the light will swim.

I’ll give her all, without a fight—
My morning thoughts, my dreams at night.
And in her eyes, I’ll finally see
The love I saved was meant to be.

So I wait—not lost, but sure—
That love that’s real will still endure.
And when she comes, I will not run—
For I’ll have known she was the one.

© 2025 Shawn Oen. All rights reserved.

When the Bridge Fell

The lights flickered first—
just a blink,
like the building held its breath.
We thought maybe a surge,
summer storm,
just another twitch in the current of death.

Then the pager cracked.
Sharp voices,
frantic,
codes and numbers too fast to hold.
Something was wrong.
Something was breaking
right there, in the city we thought we knew cold.

“Bridge down. 35W. Full collapse.”

Time split like concrete under weight.
And then it came—
the rush,
the flood,
of sirens and stretchers and fate.

The doors blew open—
not wind,
but people.
Dripping river,
spitting blood,
torn limbs and thousand-yard stares.

The air turned thick with copper and cries.
Scrubs soaked in sweat before the first chart was read.
A child clutched to a chest that wouldn’t rise.
A woman screaming names of the already dead.

No protocol could hold the surge.
No checklist stood a chance.
We were bodies in motion,
lungs on fire,
hearts beating past the edge of chance.

I remember one man—
soaked, shivering, silent—
but his eyes had seen it all.
Steel snap.
Cars fold.
The river rise to swallow the fall.

I held pressure on wounds
with hands that wouldn’t stop shaking.
And prayed silently between each task—
not for a miracle,
but just for a break in the breaking.

And through it all—
I was alone.
No one waiting when I came home.
My wife, half a world away,
in the desert heat of Iraq,
dodging her own collapse
with every breath she didn’t say.

No one to hold me that night
when the screams still echoed in my head.
No voice down the hallway,
just silence,
and sheets gone cold
on one side of the bed.

I wanted to tell her—
about the blood, the eyes, the flood—
but I swallowed it whole,
knowing she had her own ghosts
to carry through sand and gun smoke.

And yet, somehow,
we stood.
Bent but unbroken.
Moved by some bond that needed no spoken word.
Doctors, nurses, pharmacists, chaplains—
all of us there
as the grief roared and blurred.

Later, the lights steadied.
The night grew quiet,
but no one really slept.
We carried it home
in our clothes,
in our skin,
in the secrets we wept.

And even now,
years gone past,
when the power blinks or sirens scream,
I’m back there—
in that wave of chaos
that ended one city’s dream—
and I’m still alone,
even when she’s home,
in the place where I never told her everything I’d seen.

© 2025 Shawn Oen. All rights reserved

You Wanted This

You wanted this.
Not the tears, not the silence—
but the ending.
The open door.
The echo of footsteps leaving.
And for a while,
I stayed standing in the ruins,
still setting a place for you at a table
you’d already abandoned.

I begged the past to answer.
I folded memories like laundry,
hoping they’d still fit.
But love doesn’t live in a house
where one person’s already gone.

I didn’t utterly break us.
You just stopped building.
Stopped reaching.
And I wore the weight of it,
thinking if I loved hard enough,
you might feel it again.
You didn’t.

And that’s okay now.
Because I finally see it—
freedom wearing my own name,
a sunrise that doesn’t ask a teacher’s permission to rise.

You wanted this.
And now,
so do I.

Not because I stopped loving,
but because I started living
without waiting
for you to come back.

You can keep the deafening silence.
I’ll take the joyful freedom.
You can have the past—
I’m making room
for someone that stays and builds.

© 2025 Shawn Oen. All rights reserved.