Not a Maybe
No one deserves to sit in the quiet
between almost and always.
To reread messages
searching for certainty
hidden between short replies.
Love shouldn’t feel like
waiting by a door
that never fully opens —
just enough light
to keep hope alive.
No one deserves to wonder
if they are temporary,
a placeholder heart
until something better walks in.
You are not a question mark.
Not a late-night option.
Not someone chosen
only when loneliness gets loud.
Love should say yes
without hesitation,
should reach for you
in daylight
and not just when the world feels empty.
Because the right love
doesn’t keep you guessing —
it stays,
it chooses,
it knows.
And anyone who makes you a maybe
was never ready
for someone worth a forever.
Accuse subtly
Apologize with sincerity
Empathize with touch
Show interest
Build trust
Entertain
Then strike
...observe
Ah, yes, recoil
Shocked at the moment
Insist misunderstanding
Declare character
Downplay tension
Smile and assure
Have a drink
Pull the rein
...train
Circumstances tighten
The fence is forming
The mind submits
The trial is over
The gate closes
The lie locks
The soul consents
Contract sealed
...order
Chaos concealed in control
Written by Trudy Schrader on 03-16-2026
Note: Look up the title on Google...then reread. I love layered poetry :)
It’s time to rest though I don’t want to
Rather read and write converse with you
Soup is good it warms my soul
Even to reread poems of old
Good night paper you are my friend
Recording mind’s vapor with red pen
Good night lamp and ceiling fan
And rain so damp beating garbage can
Good night iPhone with light so blue
I shall try not to rollover and look at you
Good night poets may you be well
Be it night or day as you write a spell
To whom it may concern
What I regarded as my best work
a selection of poems and written words
The title is "intense memories"
sent to a publisher that, after a week
said they would like to print my book
As the world stands for an unknown writer
I paid 400 euros for them to publish
Then came the long silences broken
with a request for more money, which
I ignored with a sigh of resignation
Our non-communication is growing
louder and deadly silent
I have reread my work, and it makes me
despair to tears that I'm not able to find
a proper publisher, but have to rely on
The third-rate publishers who are not
interested in literature per se, but a way
to make money from those who believe
They have a gift, a talent to share
Today is the saddest day in my life. I ask
What's the point of living when the wall
is unclimbable, when disappearing is
a welcoming option, because I'm losing
the belief that I matter.
That they were right all along, but they
felt sorry for me and wrote kind words
that in the end felled me like a rotten
tree in a green forest of the talented
Each day is a gamble
Even with calculated risks
We make the best decisions possible
We don’t make the best decisions possible
If that makes sense then you’ve been there
Deciding to quell instead of spell
Choosing the steady breath over the sharp truth
Letting the moment pass because speaking felt heavier
And the room felt too small for honesty
It happened on a Tuesday
One of those gray ones where time drags its feet
A conversation you’d practiced in your head
Turned into a nod, a shrug, a swallowed sentence
They waited for the rest of your thought
You let it die between you
Pretending it wasn’t important
Pretending you weren’t unraveling
By nightfall the distance had doubled
Not from anything cruel
Just from what you didn’t say
And when the message finally came
Short, decisive, colder than needed
You reread it until the words turned flat
Knowing the moment you could’ve changed it
Was already several hours behind you
And nothing good was coming back through that door
I make poems because I like to write
I do not stay about it day and night
this poem will take me less than an hour
and I know this poem will not tower
the words of another English scholar
all I am looking for is a friendly "hollar"
or maybe a laugh here or there
hopefully something to lighten up the air
My grammar is bad and structure awful
but I am making something somewhat artful
If I can paint a worded picture I am good with that
as I reread this I should trim some fat
So for all the 12-15 people that have given this a gander
please give me a thumbs up and do not slander.
The will to feel each other skin to skin while sleeping in one bed
you want me, don’t deny it
you know it’s not right, it won't be right
Trying to distract myself from crying
telling you perverse ideas
Making you sweat and tell me what you’d do to me if I were there
The ideas get more grousome each time we talk
tickets to my city are being bought
The hotel is being booked
I’m a child dressed up as an adult
Sitting on the edge of the bed
Why do I keep going? it’s not right
I hate how my body reacts to your words of holding me down, choking me, staring into my eyes
It’s all inside my mouth
All I see in my head is a repeating stream of fantasies
I reread them
imagine them
feeling it inside of me
for hours like in coma I repeat them in my head
and if you ask me how I feel
I wouldn’t know what to say
How dare I complain when I did this to myself
It's all just words and writings
They call you my ex—
like you were just another chapter,
just another name to forget.
But how do I forget
the girl who made forever feel real?
You weren’t my past.
You were my present,
my always.
The one I whispered dreams to at 2 AM,
the one I laughed with
until my ribs ached and my guard fell.
They say time heals.
But time can’t touch the parts of me
that you etched your name into.
It doesn’t erase your voice
from the corners of my mind,
or your touch
from the quiet spaces of my heart.
I still carry you—
not like baggage,
but like a scar I’m proud of,
because it means I once loved deeply,
and maybe,
was loved too.
So no—
you’re not my ex.
You’re the one I still write about
in the silence,
the one I reread like a story
that never got its final page.
And maybe… just maybe…
some stories are meant to find their ending
in the second draft.
Yours,
Always,
Me
To live in the past must be scary a bit
Like you open the novel you’ve read
And it’s not quite the same what now you reread
What you have thought, felt and said
Seems distorted by memory, you ask yourself why
Should it continue like fictional
Though the fiction it’s not, but your own past time
Behaves in some way unpredictable
It's like the Pierre Menard effect in Borges's
Attempt to rewrite an old fable
Don Quixote, who apparently wasn’t obsessed
To fight mills, to impress his fair lady
Reappears as wiser and sadder in time
That hadn’t yet entered back then
To live in the past gives no hope to revive
That familiar feeling again
It speaks of nostalgia, back in the past
You’re trying to hide from the yearning
But it can’t provide you the same healing blast
On this lonely beach in the morning.
ANSWER:
I'll be your loving Gilbert
And you'll be Anne to me
I'll build for us a gabled house
Like those in Avonlea
I'll court you like in old times
I'll play for you and croon
We'll marvel at a starry sky
And kiss under the moon
We'll pick some wild berries
Run barefoot through a field
I'll ask your hand in marriage
And hope that you will yield
We'll lie in bed together
Your legs on top of mine
Who cares about the weather?
With you it's all sunshine
And every year for reason
We'll try to go see Brooke
And every Christmas season
Reread our favorite book
QUESTION:
What is? ____ __ _____ ______
Judge me gently, as I am still a fledgling.
I avoid the pompous, gaudy and bling.
Swiftly simple suffice setting styles.
Abandoning artists amorous aisles.
Fingertips searching for contrite meaning.
Mind from one side to the other leaning.
Bringing forward a paradox of words.
Flowing and forming in flocks and herds.
Wistfully winding with wanderlust wending,
Beguiling bounty beyond beauty blending.
Meanings meander, melding misty metaphors.
Liquid amber, sweet honey seeping from pores
Innuendo intrigues, interest icily intended.
Read and reread and dutifully amended.
Bringing heights of pleasure yet forlorn.
Seeking perfection, my poem is born.
After reading YOUR poems
What can I sandy say
Not that I’m so bad
But you guys are so great
You may or may not research
Yet your words flow like lyric
Flying my spirit like black bird
Each time I hazel hear it
Sometimes I have to reread
Because your blue ocean is so deep
Growing green mind like a tree
Swimming in pearly poetry
It’s such a beautiful thing
To be enlightened by your pen
And find excellence inspiring
Me to actually try again
Not to beat your spirit
Not to match your peacock style
But to know a heart will hear it
And maybe just maybe silver smile
You're my poem
My consummate rhyme
And I could reread you
Time after time
Flowing in meter
Perfect in sync
Inscribed on my heart
In indelible ink
You forgot my intonation, and my smile
What’s behind it, wasn’t of your concern
Maybe you did not appreciate my style
Knowing that I have a lot to learn
Out of sight, then out of mind and heart
Out of anything, that can remind of me
Now at last, you’re free and you depart
Leaving for a better company
Once reread my poems, and you’ll feel
They were kisses, that I changed for words
Which were wrapping paper for the real
Real faithfulness, but something was misheard
What am I to do now, have you thought
Never doubt my love, you said to me
You’re not alone, you say, of course I’m not
I belong to you, but you can’t see
You can’t tell a heart which way to go
You can’t fake true love, you only can
Cut it to one side, belittle my soul
Ditch the words of love you said back then.
Among the shadows of people, I stumble incessantly,
Invisible among their walls of noises and living shades.
My thoughts are colorful butterflies that find no understanding,
Words - echoes crashing against the altar of the misunderstood.
Yet there exists a constellation of wanderers, kin to my solitude,
Who have begun to rummage through my soul without ever touching.
Unseen companions have sprung from elongated syllables,
They bathed my blinded eyes and were pillars amidst waves.
You, whom I have never looked into the eyes, become my guides in this realm.
I cherish you like the ships carrying me over seas of oblivion.
The wind thought to break me, to silence my song,
But in the cosmos of words, this is the unwritten law - the poet does not yield.
Sorrow intertwines with my breath, the elements seem to resist me.
I read and reread, with all my stigmata and all my unhealed yearnings.
It is your blood, faceless friends,
Formless angels holding me in arms when all tears overflow.
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