Love’s Reckoning
Grief poems
The grief poetry archive: poems about loss, memory and what remains after someone is gone — each with a note from the author and a reading you can listen to aloud.
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De Witte Jas
by Ella Tan · 8 September 2026
By Ella Tan.
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The White Coat
by Ella Tan · 8 September 2026
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.
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They Called It Safety
by Ella Tan · 30 August 2026
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.
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A Note from the Doll
by Ella Tan · 30 August 2026
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.
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Love Will Return in Another Way
by Ella Tan · 30 August 2026
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.
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Running Into a Closed Door
by Ella Tan · 24 August 2026
A poem about longing for closeness that keeps its distance — fragments of warmth, a kitchen of kisses, and the silence that follows.
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