Poems with Metaphor

There's a word for the way your coffee cup still sits on the second shelf where no one else would put it—

I woke before you and did nothing about it. The radiator ticked. Your shoulder rose and fell.

We don't say I love you anymore. We say: your phone is at eleven percent. We say: I picked up the thing

My mother's hands could find a fever through a forehead, could tell a melon's ripeness

After the rainfall, a snail draws its silver line across the stone step.

When I was young, the afternoons were countries with no border known, and summer hummed its lazy tunes

The house at three a.m. becomes a throat that hums with all the things we didn't say, and I lie still as someone in a boat

The earth is trying something underneath— you feel it in the softness of the ground, a stirring, like a sleeper holding breath

It isn't sadness. Sadness has a shape— you can walk around it, point to it, explain it to a doctor

The windows fog with everything we've made— the stew, the bread, the kettle's weary sigh— and past the glass the garden starts to fade

O body, you magnificent disaster, you creak now getting out of chairs and take the stairs a half-beat slower

The machines keep count of something— not life exactly, more like the argument life makes

He doesn't know I keep a list. Not on paper—in the body, in the part that doesn't forget.

Spring doesn't arrive. It trespasses— one crocus first,

My grandmother's kitchen had no recipe book. She measured everything

You are leaving. I know this the way I know weather— not from the forecast

You've spent thirty years trying to be quieter, smaller, more convenient—

What I think about most is not the miracles— the water, the wine,

Flowers, I have learned, are not about beauty. They are about the argument

The maples don't grieve. That's the first lesson.

June gives us the longest day and we still waste most of it talking about the weather.

The thing about winter is that it's honest. No leaves to hide behind.

You don't keep score. That's how I know.

There's a song that knows more about your life than your therapist.

The ocean doesn't care that you're watching. This is what makes it worth watching.

You will not remember the quadratic formula. I know this because I don't.

The first month you count the days. The second month you count the weeks.

We shared a room for sixteen years and I still don't know your favorite color.

My grandmother's kitchen smelled like a country that no longer exists.

It's not the presents. I know it's not the presents because the best Christmas I ever had was the year we couldn't afford them.

Because the news tells you what happened but a poem tells you what it felt like.

The caterpillar is not trying to teach you anything. It's just eating a leaf.

I know your name but not the one on your driver's license.

The score doesn't matter. I know it does. I know there are people who will read that sentence and close the poem.

You didn't bring flowers. You brought takeout and the correct opinion about the show I was watching.

They asked me to say something. As if the right words exist.

They tried to write us out of the story. Edited us to margins.

A child asks: why is the sky blue? And you start to answer and realize you don't actually know.

Sunday morning. Before the sermon. Before the hymns and the handshakes.

The man at the coffee shop paid for the person behind him. This is not the poem.

The dog does not remember your promotion. The dog does not remember your argument with your mother.

Other men describe their wives like cars they've owned too long. I refuse.

You came first. Four minutes. That's all it took for you to claim the title of oldest.

There is an age— somewhere between three and five— when a child discovers the most powerful word in any language.

My grandmother's hands were a map of everywhere she'd been.

There was a morning— I don't remember which one— when you walked into the kitchen and I looked up.

It starts before you wake. Somehow it's already there.

Marriage is a long argument about the thermostat.

The moon has heard every confession ever whispered from a bedroom window.

Beauty is not what you think. It's not the sunset. Everyone agrees about the sunset.

You will outgrow shoes. This is expected. You will outgrow clothes, bedrooms.

You're not going to believe this, but the thing that's breaking you right now won't matter in three years.

The best basketball happens after the game. When the gym is locked and the scoreboard is off.

I know you're tired. I know the kind of tired that sleep doesn't fix.

A book is a door that doesn't need a key.

Time takes the things you thought were permanent.

The roses I remember most are the ones you didn't send.

You dreamed something important last night. I know this because you always do.

This poem is not going to pretend it knows what you're feeling.

Loneliness is not being alone. I want to be clear about that.

My grandfather could fix anything. The toaster. The fence.

My brain has no off switch. I've looked.

The birds don't care that you're trying to sleep. They have a concert.

Not the big things. Everyone is grateful for the big things.

I'm not going to be cool about this. I've tried.

My therapist says I hide in metaphors.

I carry a country that fits in no suitcase, that cannot be folded into neat squares.

Nobody sits where they're supposed to.

Home is not the address. It's the sound the lock makes when you've been gone too long.

There are things I should have told you sooner.

Missing someone is not an emotion. It's a location.

The world decided to start over last night.

They call it the beautiful game and they're wrong— it's the desperate game.

Under the lights every town is the same town.

I used to think peace was silence— the absence of noise.

The first month, I kept calling. Not on purpose.

Strength is not the fist. It's the unclenching.

I looked it up: inside the chrysalis, the caterpillar doesn't just grow wings. It dissolves.

We took the same route. Past the mailbox you always had opinions about.

The caged bird knows things the free bird never has to learn.

She wasn't required to love me this much. That's the thing about aunts.

At first it was a guest. Showed up uninvited but charming.

Tonight the world gives us permission to be something else.

The body knows things the mind will never admit.

They are the original record of us— the vinyl before the streaming.

I know you don't want a poem about a spider. But consider.

The tulips don't know it's still cold. Or they know and they don't care.

"Thin" and "slender" mean the same thing except they don't.

Don't start with what it means. Start with how it sounds.

Love is like a house fire— not the kind that starts in the kitchen.

Hay palabras que se quedaron en la garganta— no por cobardía.

Quédate, no porque yo te lo pida, sino porque la noche es más larga.

Mamá es la primera palabra que aprende la boca, y la última que olvida el cuerpo.

There is a dialect spoken only in the dark— not because it's shameful.

When you set out for Ithaca— and you will set out, everyone does.

They weren't lying about the green. But they didn't tell you there'd be forty shades.

Wales doesn't shout. Wales hums. It hums in the valleys where the coal used to live.

The bell is ringing somewhere. Not for you—not yet— but don't ask who it's for.

Ninety feet between the bases. Someone measured this and got it perfectly right.

First: wonder. Something happens that shouldn't— an apple falls, a mold kills bacteria.

Dear Space, I know you're mostly nothing. Ninety-nine point nine percent of you is empty.

She walks like she knows something the room doesn't.

I loved her the way Poe loved— not with sense but with fever.

He's always there when I arrive—waiting, with my face but not my certainty.

You have brains in your head. You have shoes on your feet. But here's what the Doctor forgot to explain.

Korea is a peninsula— land reaching into water like a hand trying to touch something.

The lights go down and we become anonymous— a room full of strangers agreeing to feel together.

I don't know what it means. The museum card says Oil on canvas, 1889.

When you died in the game, the screen went dark and two words appeared: Continue? Game Over.

You pack what you can carry. Not what you need—what you can carry.

I've been trying to describe your eyes for six years and I keep getting it wrong.

Culture is not the museum. Culture is the grandmother who won't let you leave without eating.

The horse knows something about running that we've forgotten—how the whole body becomes the verb.

O pizza, democratic miracle, flat parliament of toppings—you are the only food that has survived every argument about authenticity.

Two oranges in my jacket—heavy as the future, round as the world I wanted to give her but couldn't afford.

My father's car was a 1987 something—I forget the model but remember the sound: a cough that meant winter.

The line goes out. The line comes back empty. This is the lesson: most of what you cast into the world returns without what you wanted.

Summer is the season that forgets to end on time—it lingers at the shore like a guest who loves your house more than you do.

The trees are undressing in public again—no shame, no apology, just color falling like confessions too beautiful to keep.

The first year after someone dies is a minefield of ordinary things. Their coffee mug. Their side of the bed.

I don't pray the way I was taught—on my knees, hands folded, words memorized like a password to heaven.

After she died, her garden kept going—which felt, at first, like a betrayal.

My mother gave me her worry—that gene that runs through women in my family like a river that never learned to rest.

Because the body knows things the mind won't admit—and music is the language the body speaks when words have failed their shift.

Alliteration is the poet's parlor trick—the showy sibling of subtlety, the sequined suit at the serious party.

Because prose takes the highway and poetry takes the fire escape—both get you there but one shows you the view from the outside of the building.

You didn't say the right thing. You didn't say anything. You just showed up with food and sat in my mess like it was your living room.

I didn't marry the man who brought flowers. I married the man who noticed I was crying in the kitchen and didn't ask why—just stood there and washed the dishes.

I love you the way women have always loved women—quietly at first, then all at once, then with a fury that rewrites the rules.

I want to say the thing you already know but haven't heard out loud—the thing that sits in the back of your chest like a fist that forgot to open.

You are not the poem I set out to write. You are the poem that wrote itself—sideways, surprising, with terrible spelling and the most honest last line.

The eulogy is the hardest poem: you must condense a life into minutes, make a room full of crying people laugh at least once.

Monday is the day the world clears its throat and says: again.

Black history is not a month. Black history is the woman who sat down and the man who stood up and the children who walked into schools that didn't want them.

Being in love is the thing that comes after the fireworks—the quiet drive home with the windows down and someone's hand on your knee.

All night the rain keeps the ledger, counting each roof tile twice, tapping the gutter for answers,

In the museum of small noises I keep the click of your key, the cupboard closing softly,

I have waited a century for your message to turn blue. Civilizations rose in the kitchen.

Say home and a lamp comes on. Say mother and rain begins somewhere behind the ribs.

The moon owns nothing. Not the pale road, not the pond's open hand,

I loved you through thirteen winters, through nine thousand cups of tea, through enough rain to float the house

Say it slowly: thank you for the Tuesday rides, for cutting apples thin,

One more minute, I said, and the minute built a room. It hung our coats,

At five, the office windows begin returning the sky. Screens go dark.

Dark says door. Grief says closed. Fear says every road

I knew her hands in motion: buttoning, chopping, braiding, mending,

The baby sleeps through breakfast. Your coffee cools untouched. A card leans open by the fruit,

Before language, there was her voice— not words, but weather: hum in the dark,

Before dawn he tied his boots beside the sleeping house. The kettle knew his hour.

We groan before he starts. We know the farmer, the ladder,

His hands were not a wall. They were a railing: there when the stairs went dark,

No one becomes family at the signing of a card. It happens slowly:

You are not a daughter borrowed from some other family, not an extra place setting,

The recipe card had three generations crowded in its margins. You added your note in green:

Call me when you arrive, I tell my grown son, then pretend the sentence

I spent years teaching my son which road to take, how to watch the weather,

He calls two days late with traffic in the background. I rehearse being annoyed.

You crossed the stage alone, though a hundred hands had steadied earlier stairs.

Beautiful is not what light does to your face. It is what you do with light:

There was a version of me only you remembered: the red coat, the cheap apartment,

Do not call the life small because the days were few. A match burns briefly

Your appointments remained: dentist, train, dinner with Sam, a haircut on Friday at four.

You were telling me about summer— a cabin, the lake, how this year we should finally go.

We entered with flowers, photographs, folded programs. We left with the same things

At eleven, traffic pauses. A bus kneels at the curb. The cashier stills her hands

After the service, palm branches lie beneath the pews, green commas from a sentence

Easter is not only lilies, white cloth, brass, a crowded hymn. It is the locked room opening.

After the alleluia, chairs must still be stacked. Someone gathers paper cups.

When the geese go south, no sermon follows. The sky keeps their brief handwriting,

I wrote the new address on twenty envelopes. Each time, the letters looked borrowed.

My son carries the heavy boxes, though I remember carrying him asleep from the car.

Two minutes is long enough for a kettle to begin, a traffic light to change,

The November field is not empty. Roots hold summer's instructions. Mice stitch tunnels under frost.

Two doctors lean toward one screen, one where the snow has closed the road, one three countries east.

On the late bus home I open a book no shelf could hold. A dictionary waits beneath my thumb.

The new hand does not remember. It learns. Cup first.

A red number gathers in the corner of the morning. One becomes five.

A hand-painted sign crosses the ocean before the march reaches the square. A stranger translates it.

The sign says home is twenty miles. I choose the road that makes it forty. Past the quarry,

I read beneath the table. I read inside the car. I read while brushing one side of my teeth.

Necessary has one collar, two sleeves, and socks I always lose.

I have learned twelve kings, three revolutions, and one extremely important treaty.

I love you without locking the door behind you. I love you without calling

The hill begins immediately. My lungs object at once. The old voice says turn back

Thirty does not need advice wrapped in a birthday card. It needs room for the life

We pick the dark ones carefully, leaving red fruit for another week. Thorns write thin corrections

At noon I stand beside the old wall and find my shadow folded almost entirely beneath me.

I say Father and bring every human father into the room—

The report reaches the table with one name on its cover and twelve people inside it:

I will not say nothing will change. The truth deserves better. Calls will be missed.

Beneath the order of music, a small line reads: We remember those

Grace from the Father who calls creation good. Peace from the Son

The bulletin says family and friends, so the doors must mean it. Make room for the aunt who raised him,

At midnight I open the dictionary looking for another word for tired. It offers weary, spent, exhausted,

House is the address. Home is the kettle beginning before anyone asks.

The ocean has moved its furniture, leaving wet sand, three green ropes of weed,

The screen asks whether I am sure. Progress since the last checkpoint will be lost.

The folder is heavier than the single page inside. It carries alarm clocks,

The alarm rings from habit. He reaches, then remembers. No train.

At thirteen, every doorway contains a negotiation. Can I go?

I kept the spare key three weeks after you asked for it. Not as a plan.

Not every wonder became a speech. Some entered memory quietly: shepherds smelling of fields,

The summer church picnic finally grows quiet. Children leave rings in the grass.

Before the prayer becomes language, there is breath. Before courage becomes action,

The reunion badges show our names, not the futures we predicted. The future doctor teaches music.

The third no arrives at lunch. I read it twice, then leave the screen unanswered.

Your handwriting leans across mine: oats, lemons,

The old phone charges slowly, then opens to a year when your name still meant call.

Your train leaves the coast as mine enters the city. Between us: five stations,

We press the dough outward with impatient knuckles. One edge stays thick.

A thin moon remains above the eastern roofs, late to leave

Rain follows us beneath the roof at Cardiff Central, shining on coats and platform signs.

Before the first hymn, we carry chairs from the hall. One leg wobbles.

After church, the table gathers lilies, chipped plates, and more chairs than match.

Monday is a locked gate. Tuesday, the key that bends. Wednesday is a bridge

I ask before opening the wardrobe, which is how she knows I have finally grown up.

Before church, my father oils my brother's stiff bicycle chain. He loosens his tie,

In the parking lot I kneel beside your backpack and ask what happened

The soloist reached the line she had sung at other funerals and could not carry it today.

Six men stand beside the hearse, each wearing the dark suit he hoped not to need this year.

The nurse draws a purple line where the surgeon will begin. I look at my body

On Sunday evening, my mother sets the comb, towel, and jar in order.

My mother does not measure when she makes the greens. She says enough,