I wrote “Not a Good Idea” about a phonecall that happened when I was twenty, one that I still remember. My other poem “Paper Cuts” operates in the same space. It’s about a smaller cut that still won’t close. I wanted to share them alongside eachother below.

Not a Good Idea

The phone pressed tight
against my ear—
close enough to hear you breathe.
Behind you, a room of clattering chairs
legs scraping tiles.
In my small apartment nothing moved
only the window leaking March winds
into my hands.

I braced for it—
the words you’d finally say.
I didn’t want to hear them.
I couldn’t wait.

We were never a good idea,
and still—
I would have paid with my sleep.
I would have paid with my peace
just to keep you there.

You inhaled.
From the corner of the room
the window clicked once in the frame.

And then you said my name
the way people do
right before they leave.


This anthology is full of amazing pieces. In this video, you can see me and other writers reading our texts from the project.

Paper Cuts

I squinted
to read what you’d written
in the margins of the notebook
left by the bed.

Paper cuts bloomed
across my hands
from sharp edges
I didn’t see.

I put my finger in my mouth,
tasting metal,
trying to stop the blood
before it seeps
into your words.

But it didn’t matter.
Blood found its way
into the lines,
loosening the ink
until the words
learned my name.

These poems are about two different kinds of hurt: knowing something is not working but still wanting it and a small wound that blooms into something larger.

What about you? Do you think the smallest wounds can sometimes stay with us longer than the big ones?

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Even though
I know you are gone,
I still look for scraps
in forgotten rooms—

pieces you left behind,
later thrown out:
scribbled to-do lists
withered by time,
the leather strap
to your old camera,
the silver key ring
you bought at the fair,

all gathered now
in a box of trinkets
beneath my bed.


*First published in Aphrodite Magazine.

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Recently, I was very happy to see my poem “Inventory” published in the inaugural issue of Aphrodite Magazine.

Inventory

Even though
I know you are gone,
I still look for scraps
in forgotten rooms—

pieces you left behind,
later thrown out:
scribbled to-do lists
withered by time,
the leather strap
to your old camera,
the silver key ring
you bought at the fair,

all gathered now
in a box of trinkets
beneath my bed.

Below, I’m going to share one of my poems that’s dear to my heart. I started thinking about all the things kept in a storage room, and how it can be compared to the places and people that are no longer here. It was first published in Still Here Magazine.

Don’t Ask Me What’s Gone

“What have you lost?” you ask.
I no longer know.
It sank away years ago—
behind old travel trunks
with broken seams,
clothes still scented with time.
Books with torn covers,
faded photographs,
leather cracked by light.
Newspapers wrapped around
porcelain so fine
that still shattered
when the wind came through.

So don’t ask me
what is no longer here.
Take me to the window,
where I can breathe fresh air—
where silence holds
room for me.

Do you have an object that carries more meaning than it would seem?

A small note before I go: I’ve recently opened up to paid subscriptions, which will include one extra “Letters from the Writing Desk” post each month with insights from works in progress and the writing process, and my digital poetry booklets for annual and founding subscribers. You can check it out below.

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With love,

Jonna

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When Poetic Reveries opened submissions on the theme of “Postcards,” I pulled an older poem, A Letter Never Sent, out of a drawer. I was so happy to see it published in their latest edition. It made me think about another poem I’d written around the same idea: all the words, relationships and versions of our lives that never quite came to be.

A Letter Never Sent

I wonder where it goes,
all that never came to be.
The joys and wounds
we never let breathe.

Is it locked in a drawer,
full to the brim,
of unanswered questions
and forgotten dreams?

Kisses never kissed,
words unsaid.
A name misspelled
in the top left corner.

A note not delivered,
an unspoken claim.
Journeys never taken
down steep roads to the ocean.

Do they drift as whispers
in unseen dimensions,
lulled gently to sleep
in the folds of time?

Maybe, in another sky
you still write to me —
a postcard waiting
beneath the eucalyptus tree.

Blank Paper

I wanted to write you a letter,
to spell out words left unsaid.
I would never send it,
it would just sit in an envelope
in the drawer by my bed.

But I just stare at the paper,
chewing on my pen.
The words I couldn't
say to you then,
I can't even say them now.

How about you? Do you ever think about the paths you didn't take — and the person you might have become if you had?

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I carry august with me,
a stone smoothed by the tide.
I pull it out of my pocket
and place it in the palm of my hand.

It still shimmers in shades of white
when I hold it up to the autumn sun
carrying the scent of salt and rocks
long after summer has gone.

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Even as you go home to your regular life and commitments, you discover a stone in your pocket. Salt left on your skin. Maybe you lost something in the water that you decide, in the end, not to swim back for. At least I did.

These three poems that I scribbled down in my notebook over the summer all came from that feeling: the way the summer months can hold things for us and take things from us.

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Lulled Asleep By the Tide

Moonlight kisses
midnight ripples on the shore
where I walked as a child.

I pick up a piece of glass
smoothed by the current,
edges leaning against my hand.

I catch my own reflection
smudged by years in the sand.

I throw the shard back
into the water,
where it is lulled asleep
by the tide.

The Watch

I jumped in the sea
and felt the cold water
engulf my body.

My watch slipped
from my wrist.

Should I dive down
for what was lost
behind stones and seaweed?

I saw the sun break
over the surface above me
and kept swimming up.

I Carry August With Me

I carry August with me,
a stone smoothed by the tide.

I pull it out of my pocket
and place it
in the palm of my hand.

It still shimmers
in shades of white
when I hold it up
to the autumn sun,

carrying the scent
of salt and rocks
long after summer
has gone.

I keep coming back to the idea of what we save and what we lose.

Sometimes the thing you lose is small: a watch, a shard of glass, a moment that slipped away. Sometimes what remains is even smaller: a stone, a shimmer, the smell of salt.

But maybe that is enough.

I’ve come to the conclusion that maybe we don’t need to carry the whole summer with us. Maybe one small thing in the palm of your hand can be enough to remember the light by. At least I will try to do that as we go into autumn.

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When a whisper shifts
like a ripple through the night
I rise from my bed,
sheets sticking to my skin.

Something shifts in the water by the bay
a new tide comes in,
it cannot escape
the pull  from the rising blood moon.

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Summer, often celebrated for its joy and warmth, can also evoke a sense of sadness. As the days lengthen and the world fills with colour and life, I often experience a melancholy rooted in the fleeting nature of the season. The beauty of blooming flowers and lush landscapes serves as a reminder of the passing of time.

In literature and poetry, the theme of summertime sadness is often explored. I wanted to share three of my poems on this.

The Depth of Summer

The depth of summer 
is still rooted within.
Sand between my toes 
and sun flaked skin.
Your chin rested on my shoulder 
in the pale evening light
our fingers intertwined.

When winter comes 
with its dreary cloak.
And settles over 
my body once more.
I let a finger trace 
over my collarbone. 
To feel the indent 
that you left once more.

A Summer’s Dying Wish

I am a summer’s dying wish, 
a whisper that you hear. 
A scent of something 
that’s no longer there.
I had a moment to dance in the sun.
With arms wide open 
and hair flowing down.
The wind slowly stroking 
the inside of my hands.

But now it is just a forgotten dream.
Floating out into twilight, 
never to be seen.

A Summer Already Gone

As I walk my childhood shore,
I think of a time long gone—
salty cliffs, wind from the sea,
running on docks, jumping in waves.

An endless season I believed was mine—
seaweed tangled in my hands,
shells the ocean left behind.
Warming my feet
on sun-warmed stone
as evening drew in.

Perhaps it's too late to mourn
the summer that never came,
the one already gone.

Want to read more poetry about summer? Here are some famous poems;

• “On the Grasshopper and Cricket” by John Keats

• “Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

• “The Garden” by Andrew Marvell

Do you have a favorite poem about summertime sadness? Tell me in the comments!

Related post: Poetry and Myth: Exploring Midsummer Mystique

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Before the pain had moved in,
I walked by your side,
your hand in mine.

The park provided
shadow from the trees.
Our feet followed the white cobbles
of your childhood street.
I tripped—
you grabbed my elbow
to steady me.

I often return
to that first day of spring,
the sunlight warm
against my skin.
When promises
were not yet broken,
and summer waited
just ahead.

Before we started living
in each other’s wounds,
and they became walls
we couldn’t breach.

There was hope to find,
a path not travelled,
an open road.

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Not only literal rooms, but the inner ones too. The spaces we close the door on. The places where old conversations, objects, versions of ourselves, and things left unsaid quietly remain.

Some rooms are almost empty. Some are full of what we could not say at the time. Some hold a box in a drawer, a mountain afternoon, or a silence we’ve learned to live beside.

These three poems are about those spaces: the rooms we leave behind, the rooms we carry with us, and the stories that keep waiting there.

The Quiet Rooms

What happens in the quiet rooms,
the spaces in between?

Where no sound is heard
through walls of white,
no scent is smelled,
no outside view.

Where the stories
we tell ourselves
go safely to rest.

A Conversation Between Trees

The day we went up the mountain
the sun grazed my palm,
my fingers curling shut.

The town lay spread before us,
holding its breath in the heat.

No wind could reach us—
the air dense and still.

You kicked a stone downhill,
dust rising in its wake.

The leaves still whisper
the words we left behind.

That is how
our story came to be:
a conversation
between trees.

And all that remains unsaid
finds a place
among the shelves.

The Box

In my bedroom drawer
there is a box I never open.

It waits in silence,
whispering my name.

It speaks of moments
tucked away —
of claims unspoken,
and photographs
long laid to rest.

A locket of gold,
a letter folded twice,
a scarf I wore
when my hair
fell freely down.

At night,
it hums in my ears,
a presence
I never invited.

A part of me
still fears the lid —
yet something waits
for the day
I let it breathe.

I think we all have rooms like this.

Not always visible. Not always easy to name. But they are there — behind a closed door, inside a drawer, between trees, beneath the surface of an ordinary day.

Maybe leaving a room behind does not always mean forgetting it.

Sometimes it means letting it stay where it is, until we are ready to return.

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You asked me
to come to see you.
You were leaving early 
the next morning.
I told you I had plans.

Three days later
I went to the station
and bought a ticket
watched the fields
turn into buildings
outside my train window.
Walked the white cobbles
down your street.

Sat beneath the shadow
of a tree in the park
across from your house
and looked
at the door.

Nothing happened. 
No curtains moved. 
No footsteps crossed the hall. 
No shadow passed the window. 
You were already gone. 

Still, 
I sat there for an hour, 
as if regret 
could arrive late 
and find me waiting.


*First published in HAD.

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Sometimes nothing dramatic happens. No big ending. No slammed door. No final speech.

Just a train leaving.
A phone call that you didn’t take.
A door you look at from across the street.

And still, years later, the moment stays.

These three poems circle that feeling: the strange ache of bad timing, hesitation, and all the small ways we miss each other.

I’m also really happy to share that “Three Days Later” was recently published by HAD, which means a lot to me. It’s a poem about regret arriving too late — or maybe about the part of us that still wants to show up, even when we already know the moment has passed.

Three Days Later

You asked me
to come to see you.
You were leaving early
the next morning.
I told you I had plans.

Three days later
I went to the station
and bought a ticket,
watched the fields
turn into buildings
outside my train window.

Walked the white cobbles
down your street.

Sat beneath the shadow
of a tree in the park
across from your house
and looked
at the door.

Nothing happened.
No curtains moved.
No footsteps crossed the hall.
No shadow passed the window.
You were already gone.

Still,
I sat there for an hour,
as if regret
could arrive late
and find me waiting.

Platform

“How’s dad?”
you asked your mom,

phone wedged
between your shoulder
and your ear,

leaning against the railing,
July heat
rising from the platform.

I stood beside you,
numb.

We were waiting
for the train
that would take you back
to your friend’s house
by the coast.

I stayed
in the city.

Missed Call

The phone screen lit up.

A missed call.

You hung up
before I could answer.

Your name glowed
like a residue
in the dimly lit room.

I don’t know
what you decided
not to say.

The low-hanging sun
broke through
the thin fabric
of the curtains
in my new flat.

I kept rearranging them,
but couldn’t get
the room dark enough
to fall asleep.

I think what interests me about missed connections is that they are often so undramatic from the outside.

A person doesn’t come to the door.
A train arrives.
A phone stops ringing.

And yet, inside, something keeps happening. The moment doesn’t end just because nothing comes of it. It lingers. It turns into a question, or a memory, or a version of yourself still sitting somewhere, waiting for the impossible thing to happen.

Maybe that is what these poems are really about: not just missing another person, but meeting yourself in the aftermath of that miss.

When you hesitated.
When you stayed.
The time you arrived too late.
Or when you still wonders what might have been said.

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These recent tanka circle memory, absence, and the traces people leave behind. Some arrive as echoes. Some as landscapes. Some remain in the body long after the moment itself has passed.

Distant Thunder

A distant thunder
echoes deep inside my mind.
My ears stay blocked.
I can’t hear the cracking sound
vibrating through the ground.

Sylvian Whispers

Sylvian whispers drift
telling secrets never shared.
like a memory lost.
I follow it through the wind,
down a trail of broken paths.

Tideborn Dreams

Beneath tideborn dreams
a new current takes its form,
I reach out my hand,
fingers skimming the surface
of foam from restless waves.

Hollow Mark

A sting of salt remains
burning softly on my skin,
the print of your hand,
still pressed like a hollow mark
never quite settling in.

Fading

A vision of you
slowly fading from my reach,
I watch your back turn,
engulfed in the darkened streams
as I lose you from my sight.

Corvid’s Cry

A corvid's cry
flows through darkened woods at dusk,
echoes through the trees.
I walk beneath the wingbeat's shade,
along paths never walked before.

Sometimes poetry feels less like writing and more like listening carefully enough for what’s already there.

— Jonna

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The phone screen lit up.
A missed call.
You hung up
before I could answer.

Your name glowed
like a residue
in the dimly lit room.
I don’t know
what you decided
not to say.

The low-hanging sun
broke through
the thin fabric
of the curtains
in my new flat.

I kept rearranging them,
but couldn’t get
the room dark enough
to fall asleep.

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Not the grand stories, not the important dates, but a light switch on a basement wall, a hand on someone’s back, a steep road downhill.

These three poems are about my father at different ages: as a child, as a son, and as my father. They are about the way family stories move through us, and how ordinary moments can hold a whole life inside them.

Light Switch

The earliest memory
my father has
was reaching up
trying to turn on
the lights
in the basement.

As an adult,
he came back
to his childhood home
and saw that the switch
sat so low on the wall.

He couldn’t have been
more than three years old.

Fast Eater

My father used to eat so fast.
Everything on the table
vanished.

When his mother
was still alive
and he came to visit,
she would make
his favorite meal.

She stood behind him
with a hand on his back,
apron still tied
around her waist.

“No one can eat like you,”
she’d say.

Downhill

When I was a child,
we lived in a house
embedded in green.

To get to the village,
there was a steep road downhill.

My father had
just taught me how to bike.

I wanted to go down the hill by myself,
so I strapped on my helmet
and went down the stairs
to the garage.

“I think you can do it,”
my father said.
“Take a few coins
and buy an ice cream
at the store.”

Of course, I lost control
and crashed my bike.

My father came running
when he heard me cry.

He covered my bleeding knee
with his giant hand,
stroked away my angry tears,
shook his head and said:

“I never should've let you
go down that road alone.”

I keep thinking about how love often lives in the smallest gestures.

In a mother standing behind her grown son with her hand on his back.
In a father letting his child try.
In the regret that comes the moment after.
In the hand that reaches for the bleeding knee.

These are not dramatic memories, but maybe that is why they stay. They hold different versions of him: the child he was, the son he remained, and the father I knew from the childhood — worried, loving, and human.

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Sometimes a scene stays with me long after the episode ends.

Not because of the plot, exactly, but because something in it brushes against a feeling I already know: longing, recognition, grief, the ache of almost-saying something. A character can walk through a doorway, sit in silence, lose someone, choose someone, or fail to say the thing that matters — and suddenly the scene belongs partly to me too.

These three poems were both sparked by scenes from TV dramas. They are not exactly about the shows themselves, but about what those moments opened up.

I won’t say which shows inspired them just yet.

I thought it might be more fun to let you guess.

Let it Go

“I think I may have loved you,
but I need to let it go,”
she said,
voice unsteady,
blue cap and gown
hair pinned up
for graduation day.

She was due
to give a speech
in ten minutes.

The phone pressed tight
in his fist,
his forehead resting
against steel.
He didn't say anything
at the other end
of the line.

Aftermath

You don’t get to tell me
you never lost hope
while I clawed at the seams,
trying not to let go.

Scavenging every note
you left behind,
searching for your love
in places already stripped bare.

You don’t get to say
you still love me
when I’ve tracked
a path forward,
a hand to hold.

You don’t get
to do this to me—
not now,
when the earth
has finally steadied
beneath my feet.

Before the Doors Close

The words she said
are still lingering—
a thought that won’t leave you alone.

It lies on your pillow
as you lay your head down,
the imprint of her hand
still resting on your neck.

Rise from your chair
and ask yourself
what matters more:

being right,
or being with her?

It’s time
to chase your love
through the underground.

These poems began with something I watched — a scene, a look, a silence that lingered after the episode ended. They moved away from the screen pretty quickly and became something more personal.

I’m always interested in how fictional worlds become emotional mirrors. Sometimes what moves us most in a story is not what belongs to the characters, but what it reveals in us.

So now I’m curious:

Could you guess which TV shows inspired these poems?

Leave your guesses in the comments — I’ll reveal the answers soon.

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There’s something about midsummer that always feels a little contradictory to me.

It’s the brightest part of the year. The season of late sunsets, warm rocks by the water, and evenings that seem to stretch on forever. Yet it’s also the point where summer begins to slip away. Before we know it, the days start growing shorter again.

The three poems below were written at different times, but they all circle around that feeling: trying to hold onto a season that never stays quite long enough.

I hope you enjoy them.

Midsummer Storm

I am a midsummer storm,
breaking free—
flowing through green meadows
in search of the sea.

I am the whisper
that slips through your ear at night,
the soft kiss on your skin
left by twilight’s drought.

A letter forgotten
on the windowsill,
taken by the evening wind.

When you wake,
you’ll think I was a fleeting dream—
I am nowhere to be found,
yet in the air you breathe.

A Summer Already Gone

As I walk my childhood shore,
I think of a time long gone—
salty cliffs, wind from the sea,
running on docks, jumping in waves.

An endless season I believed was mine—
seaweed tangled in my hands,
shells the ocean left behind.
Warming my feet
on sun-warmed stone
as evening drew in.

Perhaps it's too late to mourn
the summer that never came,
the one already gone.

Where Summer Ends

Yet another summer
slips through my fingers,
carried off
by the foam of waves.

On the horizon,
autumn lingers —
storm-heavy winds brooding
over the bay.

But for now,
I bury my feet
in the pebbles
of my childhood's beach,
watching them ripple
circles in the water —
breaking the surface,
sinking beneath.

Thank you for reading.

Are you celebrating Midsummer this year? If so, I hope the weather is good, the strawberries are sweet, and you get at least one quiet moment to enjoy the light.

Happy Midsummer,

Jonna

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Was I just a secret
that you whispered
in your sleep?
An undercurrent,
barely there,
still strong enough
to pull you
out to sea—
past the sand dunes,
through twind in the reeds.

A raindrop on your eyelid:
blink and it was gone.
You thought.
But it travelled down your neck,
settling in the hollow
of your collarbone.

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Lately, I’ve been writing a lot about family.

I’ve been thinking about inheritance — not just in the traditional sense, but the stories, habits, memories, and ways of seeing the world that are passed from one generation to the next. My grandparents are both long gone, yet I often find them returning in unexpected ways: through old photographs, family anecdotes, or memories I thought I’d forgotten.

These three poems—Hairpins, Letters, and Spinning Chair — grew out of those moments.

Hairpins

My grandmother
used to sing me a lullaby.

Swedish and Finnish
mixed into one.

The words, I later learned,
were nothing special—
just girls' names
and chores on a farm.

But the melody was eerie,
strangely calming to me,

lying on my grandmother's arm,
her breath smelling of liquorice,

her hairpins loosening
and falling onto the pillow

while passing cars
outside the window

lit up her grey hair
like a crown.

To this day, I can recall
every word of that song.

When I see a lost hairpin
in my wash basin,

or a silk scarf
lying on the ground,

I hear her voice again,

sounding out words
that don't make sense

but still linger
at the edge of my thoughts.

Letters

My grandmother
used to write letters
to my mother.
Small observations.
How her day went.

“It will be interesting to see
what lowlife she'll bring home one day”,
she wrote about me,
her granddaughter.

She had a gift
for storytelling.
Maybe she would have been
a novelist
if she had been born
in another time,
another place.

She never got to meet you.
But I think
she would have liked you.

You have
the same sense of humour.

Spinning Chair

I had a favourite chair
in my grandparents’ home.
When I sat in it
a smirk grew
on my grandfather’s face.

He got up
from the kitchen table
and walked slowly towards me 
slightly limping
in his grey pullover.

When he reached me
he spun the chair around
until I squealed with laughter.

We never needed many words.

As I work on a collection of poems about family history and inheritance, I’ve been thinking a lot about the ways people continue to shape us long after they’re gone.

These poems are part of that exploration.

Thank you for reading, and for helping keep these stories alive for a little while longer. I'd love to hear what objects, stories, or family memories have stayed with you over the years.

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