I’ve been thinking a lot about missed connections lately. The message you didn’t answer quickly enough. The visit you postponed. The conversation that almost happened. The moment when someone was still close enough to reach, and then suddenly wasn’t.
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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