Èlara Veyne

22/02/2026

How I’ll Survive It

I’ll die still wanting you.
Not loudly.
Not in a way that ruins dinner
or makes the laughter miss a step.

I’ll do it well,
with good posture,
a steady voice,
and my hands busy
with anything but you.

I’ll call it friendship,
the sanctioned name
for wanting that has nowhere to go.

So I’ll bring the joke, the advice, the birthday text.
I’ll be the easiest person to lose
and the hardest one to read.

And if anyone looks closely,
I’ll say I was lucky to know you.

Which is true.
Which is how I’ll survive it.
Which is how I’ll die of it.

-Èlara Veyne

22/02/2026

21/02/2026

Still Guilty

Will this confession become key evidence against my heart?
Exhibit A: my mouth still says your name.

*****

If I plead guilty,
the sentence will be either reduced
or just extended without term.

If I testify,
the judge will find your name
beating in my wrist
and rule: still in love.

*****

I request leniency.
Love objects. Sustained.

I try “not guilty.”
My eyes impeach me.

Early plea, lighter time,
but loving you gets no parole.

Your silence is cross-examined.
It stands.
I’m the one who cracks.

I want absolution.
They grant me friendship,
a plea deal.
I sign.

And I walk out
still carrying the crime.

- Èlara Veyne

16/02/2026

And so I conclude
-again and again-
that loving love
is the bravest method
of staying alive.

-Èlara Veyne

13/02/2026

Warmth

I met a real poet today.
You could tell
by the way he listened,
as if silence
were a language
worth translating.

He held my hand,
not like a gesture
but like a question,
careful,
curious,
as though heartbeat were punctuation
and skin a page.

For a moment
I was not a body
ticking through errands and hours.

I was a stanza,
felt,
measured,
kept.

He did not recite anything grand.
No thunder.
No velvet declarations.

Just warmth.

And somehow
that was the most precise line
he could have written.

- Èlara Veyne

12/02/2026

Pulseline

My heart is heavy with sorrow,
yet it carries me around,
faithful beast of burden,
beating through the dusk.

It drags its chains of memory
across my chest,
a low, persistent sound
like winter wind in an empty place.

Still
it lifts me from the bed,
moves blood through reluctant limbs,
insists upon morning.

How strange
that something so bruised
refuses to surrender.

My heart
anchor and compass
thick with grief
holds the way.

- Èlara Veyne