Waiting For A Lost Love Poem by Dave Dafes

Each evening, as dusk loosens the day from its grip,
she dresses for a memory.
Silk once radiant now whispers in threads,
edges frayed like the patience of time.
Her finest gown—no longer fine—
clings to her as if it too remembers
how it once was seen.

Jewels—every one she owns—
hang like relics of a brighter era,
small constellations dimmed by waiting.
She fastens them carefully, ceremoniously,
as though love might recognize her
if she shines just enough.

And so she goes.

The door of the bar still sighs the same way
it did the night they met—
a familiar breath of wood and wine,
of laughter that belongs to other lives.
No one stops her.
No one needs to.

Her table is waiting.
It always is.

She sits where she sat beside him—
across from absence dressed as expectation—
and smooths the cloth as if straightening fate.
The waiter does not ask.
He knows.

"One bottle, " she says softly,
"The one we always had."

Two glasses are placed.
She does not touch hers yet.
She waits.

Minutes stretch into something heavier.
Eyes drift to the door—
every shadow a possibility,
every silhouette a promise that fails
as quickly as it forms.

Still she waits.

At last, she lifts the glass—
not in celebration,
but in concession—
and drinks for two.

Glass after glass,
she fills the silence with memory,
each sip dissolving the present
into a softer, sweeter past.
There, he still laughs.
There, he still leans forward,
hands warm around hers,
eyes full of a future
that never arrived.

She lingers there—
in that fragile, honeyed place—
until the voice cuts through:

"Last call."

Reality returns like a thief.
The lights sharpen.
The chair across from her remains untouched.
The second glass, always full.

She leaves.

Night greets her without kindness.
The streets do not remember him.
Only she does.

At home, she prepares her second ritual—
draws herself a bath,
sprinkles rose petals into its scented stream,
a fragrance she once learned by heart,
hoping—always hoping—
it might awaken that night again.

The first night.

When love found its voice
in that very space,
in that softened water,
where music wrapped around them
like a second skin,
and time forgot its duty.

There, they had risen—
not in body alone, but in spirit—
as though lifted beyond the world,
beyond the quiet watch of the stars,
into some sacred court of feeling
where only they were known.

Again and again,
night after night after work,
they returned to that small sanctuary—
their hidden shrine,
their quiet covenant—
until dawn would dare to interrupt them
with its pale insistence.

Now she enters alone.

She slips beneath the water
as though it might hold her together,
as though it might remember for her
what she cannot let go.

Again, she finds him there.

In warmth.
In nearness.
In a world where nothing was lost.

Her head tilts back,
eyes closed against the truth,
and she drifts—
not into sleep,
but into longing deep enough
to resemble peace.

Until even that fades.

She wakes cold,
water stilled,
candles dimmed to ghosts of flame.
The silence returns,
as it always does.

She rises.
She dries.
She walks to her bed.

And tomorrow—
as surely as the sun forgets the night—
She will dress again,
adorn herself in echoes,
and return to the very spot
the universe once assigned to them,
where love arrived without warning
and vanished without reason.

Still—
she will wait.