I just really wanted it. Wanted it to be you.
With all your flaws, with all your so said “imperfections” (which I just could not see none).
I could not see because you were everything within nothing. You were the light within the dark and the circle between all the lines.
The outstanding tulip.
As I’ve just imagined in therapy months ago before you.
Maybe that tulip was not even me.  
Maybe it was you all along. Maybe it was you since I started craving love.
We’ve waited for so long, haven’t we?
23 years for you and twenty-two for me.
But it was all for nothing.
‘ Cause as we came it was the same way as we gone. Suddenly. Just moments…just idyllic pictures of the two of us being together for eternity because we were made for each other.
“The match made in heaven”, remember?
God, I just miss you and I don’t even know if you miss me too or even just think about me sometimes.
I mean I indeed think about you.
Almost every second.
You are just in my every move, every breath, every heartbeat, every draft of thoughts, every blink.
I just love you so much, wish you could have loved me back.
So please, just disappear.
Please let me live.
I have to do this alone.
I have to go.
I have to love myself in the first place so I can love somebody else in the second, when its time. But that time is not now and I can accept that.
I an good like this. Lonely, you know. It’s easier…the grief.
It’s more quiet. More peaceful.
Everything feels like more, you know…and somehow less at the same time.
It’s just silence. All that left. What you left.
Can you hear me now?

I’ve got 61 volumes, with over a thousand files
Some full of crying, some full of smiles
I’ve got volumes of love, volumes of life
There’s a lot about me, a bunch about my wife

I have a few funny ones, you know I’m a cynic
I’ve got rants about the world, everybody’s in it
I go on and on about people, all different kinds
When I post online, we poets share our minds

I’m always writing, since about 1975
It keeps me humble; it keeps me alive
Sometimes my writing is off the top of my head
I’ll be writing poems, at least until I’m dead

Life is good
in Brussels and Amsterdam
People do their work

without headlines and footnotes
without indolence and excuses
in advance

Work and rules change
but everyone knows for themselves
what it takes, being of service

and satisfied, every time
the customers are kings for a while
and both are human with each other

Returning
is like donning an old, familiar cloak
Heavy, and somehow still warm
though it hasn’t been worn,
despite its wear,
in ages.

The years under my eyes
slip off my shoulders, like
rolling drops of rain
As decades of a different kind
settle in my mind,
Feeling like wisdom might
though it could just as well be
simple vanity.

I imagine myself to be
different,
Not arrogant enough to envision
what I ought to be,
But merely something better, at least
than what the mirror sees.

I avoid looking at my reflection.
I hold my breath
like plunging under water
when I turn to face the miles remaining
that I must tread
a second time.

The ice, that ice-
It chills me to the bone
As I sink under,
it freezes my lungs
and paralyzes the breath inside them-

And yet, I pull the coat around me tighter,
smelling of mothballs from the back of the closet
digging my nails into the fur fabric
I force my eyes to open.

Beyond the darkness I imagined,
there is, of course, still light:
From between my lashes, I glimpse myself
and find I am still, no longer trembling-
And though I am not beautiful,
and even this curious look
somehow exposes every piece of me
which lacks perfection
And I remember what it used to be
And

I take a breath,
I let the surface of the water calm.
I reach deep inside for comfort,
and meet the small voice
who trusts I can return there again.
Maybe I will be wiser the second time around.

On hidden tracks I screamed
Down the twisted path and gleaned
The whirl of life, of truth and lies
As they all rushed, and passed me by

The farther back I looked and strained
The less I saw, the more it waned
The wheels beneath began to quake
Though I knew, not to squeeze the brakes

The road ahead seemed dark and dim
The headlight’s glow, showed but a slim
Part of what came towards me at speed
I was entranced, I couldn’t breathe

For all the things in life I’ve done
The people loved, the people shunned
All blaze on by, now equidistant
A blur that spells out my existence

But this whole time I’ve rode alone
My course apart, this race my own
I wholly smiled and made good time
As I careened across the finish line

I chased you.
You ran from me.
I missed you.
You came back to me.
I loved you.
You loved me back.
I found my first home with you.
You moved in with me.

I started to fly.
You started to fall.
I resented you.
You wanted to marry me.
I turned your bad days worse.
You didn’t deserve that.
I wanted you gone.
You wanted me back.

I told you I never loved you.
You asked for another chance.
I brushed off your goodbye.
You turned around and died.

I thought I moved on from us.
But you come back to all my thoughts.
I didn’t mean to do this to you.
You didn’t know I was so bad for you.

I want to trade spots with you.
You should still be here.
I didn't know I was your torturer.
You didn’t know I’d be your murderer.

C.K. Orzen

An Open Invitation to All Poets on Hello Poetry

Dear poets,

I’m starting a collaborative writing project called “Our Time Capsule — The 21st Century.”
It’s a collective space where we, as writers of this era, can capture what life feels like right now—through poems, reflections, metaphors, and symbols.

This is not just about politics or technology or trends.
It’s about how it feels to be alive in this century:
The loneliness and the love,
The silence behind the screens,
The beauty, the fear, the ordinary days,
The things we wish the future would understand about us.

You’re warmly invited to join. Write in your own style—haiku, free verse, letters, experimental forms, anything. Just tag your work with:

#OurTimeCapsule
(or mention the project name in the notes)

Let’s create a time capsule made of words, one poem at a time.
Someday, someone may read what we write today and understand our century—not from textbooks, but from our hearts.

If this resonates with you, join in. I’ll be posting mine soon.

— Yashkrit Ray