Best Poems Written by Tersina Maria Toppo

Elegy for the Almost

They carved their names in rust before the steel was forged.
A Saturday baptized in neon, Beer, LIIT and bad timing. 
One table for strangers,
one curse wearing the mask of fate.

He sat there like the silence before an air raid,
eyes buried in bloodsport,
a man too still to know he was already the disaster.

She was someone else’s ghost,
dragging a dying love behind her like broken chains.
He was the fire escape she wasn’t supposed to find.

While mouths collided around them,
They built a cathedral from quiet conversations.
Then poison flooded her veins,
and his hands became the rails that kept her calm.

He carried her to the edge of oblivion,
again and again,
never once mistaking her weakness for permission.

She stole the cigarette from his lips.
He let the smoke die behind his ear
like surrender had finally learned his name.

She buried her head against his shoulder,
slept through the noise,
dreaming of a life that had no right to exist.

There was a moment,
her hands dragged his face toward hers,
their eyes locked like blades,
and the whole world held its breath.

But cowards survive.
So she looked away.

She laid her legs across his,
waiting for the monster everyone warned her about.

He never came.
Only the man.

At 2:00 am, the night slit its own throat.
She called his name into the darkness,
pulled him into one last embrace,
and left pieces of herself inside his heartbeat.

Morning arrived dressed as a hangover.
His missed call.
One message.

“Did you make it home safely?”

No confession has ever sounded louder.

Then came two weeks,
a lifetime compressed into unread playlists,
forgotten bands, 
films no one else understood.

He called her a spell.
Said she had bewitched him.

He was written like the kind of man
women invent because reality disappoints them.

He made her feel beautiful
without ever asking for her body.

But every saint hides a wound,
every sinner carries a prayer.

He said she could save him.
Life laughed.
They ended before they ever began.

Now every song is a gravestone,
every melody another funeral
for the version of them
that only existed between midnight texts
and almost kisses.

If fate is cruel enough to resurrect strangers,
find Me again,
not to finish what We started,
but to mourn.

what never had the chance
to bleed.

Copyright © Tersina Maria Toppo | Year Posted 2026