Love’s Reckoning

Love’s Reckoning

The poetry blog

New poems as they are written — with the date they were posted, the themes they belong to, and a spoken reading in a soft female Chinese-accented voice for each one.

The poetry guideSubmit your own poem

Cover art for the poem “The White Coat”

The White Coat

by Ella Tan · 8 September 2026

lossmemorypower

A cold, plain poem about the distance between a man's public reputation and the house he goes home to. This is a work of fiction; characters and circumstances have been fictionalised.

Read the full poem →
Cover art for the poem “They Called It Safety”

They Called It Safety

by Ella Tan · 30 August 2026

lossidentitymotherhoodbetrayal

A mother's reckoning — a literary, subjective poem about institutions that rename power as virtue, and a mother who refuses to let an official judgment become the truth about her love.

Read the full poem →
Cover art for the poem “Endurance Test for One”

Endurance Test for One

by Ella Tan · 30 August 2026

love

A poem about affection with a built-in emergency exit — devotion that endures a sentence that never becomes a future.

Read the full poem →
Cover art for the poem “Love Will Return in Another Way”

Love Will Return in Another Way

by Ella Tan · 30 August 2026

loss

After Kafka and the lost doll: a poem about how love changes form but never truly leaves. For Kafka, the doll, and the girl who waited.

Read the full poem →
Cover art for the poem “A Note from the Doll”

A Note from the Doll

by Ella Tan · 30 August 2026

loss

A doll writes home to the girl who loved her — a poem about leaving, change, and the long way love takes to return. For Lotus.

Read the full poem →
Cover art for the poem “Love Negotiated”

Love Negotiated

by Ella Tan · 26 August 2026

abandonmentfatherhoodmotherhoodreckoning

On absence, and the ordinary things fatherhood asked for.

Read the full poem →
Cover art for the poem “Gentle Orbit”

Gentle Orbit

by Ella Tan · 24 August 2026

love

September 5th, 2025 — after London, before Yasmina's birthday. She asked him to give it a title. He never did.

Read the full poem →
Cover art for the poem “Running Into a Closed Door”

Running Into a Closed Door

by Ella Tan · 24 August 2026

memory

A poem about longing for closeness that keeps its distance — fragments of warmth, a kitchen of kisses, and the silence that follows.

Read the full poem →