Featured Poems from Stardust

A glimpse into the collection

Stardust is a human-cosmos poetry collection about love, grief, healing, courage, family, friendship, belonging, and the ordinary wonders that help us keep going.

Across 115 poems, stars enter kitchens, windows become observatories, and small gestures become constellations. These selected excerpts offer a wider glimpse into a collection written for those who feel more than they say and carry more than anyone sees.

For those who find wonder in ordinary rooms

Excerpt from “Stardust at the Kitchen Table”

The first time I understood the sky,

it was not through a telescope.

It was at the kitchen table,

with my hands around a cup

that had gone cold while I was thinking.

Outside, the evening pressed its blue face

to the window.

Inside, a lamp hummed over crumbs,

open bills, a spoon, a folded towel,

the small debris of living.

Someone had left a chair pulled out,

as if the house itself had risen

and forgot where it meant to go.

I looked at the dust moving in the light,

that quiet golden drift

above the table,

and for once it did not seem like dirt.

It looked almost magical.

A private little galaxy.

The room keeping what the world held,

only smaller and nearer.

I had spent so long looking upward

for proof that life was large,

I almost missed the miracle

settling on the rim of my cup.

The same old stars,

broken,

small enough to enter a kitchen.

The same ancient matter

resting

on the back of my hand.

No messenger arrived.

No voice split the ceiling.

Only the lamp,

the cold tea,

the dust dancing slowly,

and the sudden thought

that nothing in me

was separate

from anything at all.

For those who remember the moment before love had a name

Excerpt from “Before I Knew Your Name”

Before I knew your name,

I knew the art of waiting.

I knew the corner of the train station

where pigeons gathered under the clock.

I knew the cracked tile near the ticket window,

the old man selling flowers in paper sleeves,

the rainwater trapped in the grooves of the platform.

I was not waiting for you exactly.

I was waiting for something

that would make the world lean closer.

The evening train came late,

as trains do when the heart is rehearsing speeches.

People stepped out carrying bags,

numb fingers, tired faces,

small private moons of worry.

Then you appeared in the crowd,

not glowing,

not too confident,

lost in thought.

You were looking for someone else.

I was looking nowhere.

But the space between us shifted,

the way air changes before rain,

and I felt the old, quiet machinery of the world

turn one hidden wheel.

There are moments so small

we only understand them years later.

A glance.

A missed step.

The wrong train becomes the right one.

A stranger's sleeve brushing yours

as the doors slide open.

Before I knew your name,

I knew only this:

that the world had been large that morning,

then suddenly became defined.

The clock kept ticking.

The pigeons lifted.

The train passed behind us.

And somewhere inside the dark matter of my life,

one star learned where to stand.

For those who discover love through someone else’s memory

Excerpt from “The Woman Who Returned the Umbrella”

The woman who returned the umbrella

had kept it for three years.

She appeared at the door

on a bright morning,

which made the gesture

seem almost comic.

No rain.

No urgency.

Only a blue umbrella

with one bent rib

and her careful hands

around the handle.

Your mother lent it to me,

she said.

Before.

Before had become a place

we entered only by accident.

I invited her in.

Tea felt necessary,

though neither of us

wanted much.

She told me

how my mother

had walked her home

through a storm,

complaining about her shoes,

laughing at the wind

as if the storm was a rude cousin

who would eventually calm down.

I had not known this story.

The dead keep living

outside our memories,

apparently.

They lend umbrellas

and become shelter

in other people's storms.

When the woman left,

she would not take it back.

“Keep it,”

she said.

It knows your house.

I stood in the doorway

holding that small blue sky

and felt my mother

return,

not as grief,

but as rain

someone else had survived

because of her.

For those who know how complex families can be

Excerpt from “The Scar on the Table”

The scar on the table

came from a candle

left too long

near the edge

of someone's wedding speech.

A dark oval,

smoothed by years

of elbows,

plates,

homework,

letters opened

with shaking hands.

My mother hated it

for a month.

Then stopped seeing it.

Then loved it

because we did.

Every family has

a mark like that.

Something burned,

spilled,

cut,

said,

not fully erased

but absorbed

into habit.

At Christmas,

the scar sat beneath

the bowl of potatoes.

During arguments,

it watched our hands

close and open.

When babies learned

to stand,

they gripped the edge

near that blackened moon

and pulled themselves

upright.

After the house was sold,

we almost left the table.

Too heavy.

Too scratched.

Too full

of what could not

come with us.

Then my brother said,

“No.”

So we carried it

through the door

sideways,

awkwardly,

laughing when it stuck.

The scar went with us,

dark and quiet,

still holding

its place

at the centre.

For those who meet grief in the sound of a hinge

Excerpt from “The Garden Gate”

The garden gate

had always dragged

against the path.

You had to lift it

with your knee

and push

at the same time.

Visitors struggled.

Family knew.

After my father died,

I meant to fix it.

All summer,

it scraped the stones

with the same old complaint.

Each sound

called him back:

his boots,

his whistle,

his habit

of carrying string

as if the world

were constantly

coming loose.

One evening,

I found his toolbox

under the stairs.

The hinges were rusted.

The screws resisted.

I swore

in his exact voice

and laughed so suddenly

I had to sit down.

Grief changes shape

when it catches you

imitating the dead.

By dark,

the gate swung cleanly.

Too cleanly.

The silence of it

felt almost wrong.

I opened it,

closed it,

opened it again.

Above the hedge,

the first star appeared.

I wanted him

beside me,

criticising the angle,

handing me the wrong tool

with complete confidence.

Instead,

the gate moved

without pain.

Loss.

Love.

Both hung

on the same hinge.

For those who know that finding each other is enough

Excerpt from “Stardust”

At the end,

there was no great answer.

Only a beach after sunset,

wind lifting sand against our ankles,

the tide drawing its dark breath in and out.

We had come here older

than the people who first believed

love could save them from change.

Your hair had silver in it.

My hands had learned to tremble

in rainy weather.

We carried losses -

neither of us had it easy.

Still, we kept walking

side by side.

Above the water,

the first stars appeared

one by one,

as themselves:

fire far away,

arriving late,

arriving anyway.

You picked up a shell

and handed it to me

as if giving me a moon

small enough to keep.

I laughed.

The sound startled me.

It had been so long since joy

came without asking for permission.

We spoke of ordinary things:

the train tomorrow,

the ache in your knee,

the soup we would make

when we got home.

The world did not become smaller

because of this.

It became kinder.

For what is stardust,

if not the ancient learning

to respect the ordinary?

A hand.

A shell.

A kitchen light left on.

A name spoken gently

beside the sea.

We stood there until the sky deepened

and the water erased our footprints

without malice.

Nothing stayed.

Not the marks in sand.

Not youth.

Not sorrow in its first sharp form.

Yet something remained.

The warmth of your hand.

The shell in my pocket.

The starlight arriving

from distances beyond us.

And the old truth,

kept being repeated:

we pass by briefly,

we are burning,

and for a little while,

we find each other

in the dark.

For those who sit where someone else used to sit

Excerpt from “The Chair by the Window”

For months after he died,

no one sat in the chair by the window.

It was not forbidden.

No one said it aloud.

But the room understood.

The chair kept his shape

long after the blanket was folded,

long after the newspapers were cleared,

long after the small table beside it

lost the glass of water

he never finished.

Morning entered there first.

It touched the worn arms,

the hollow in the cushion,

the place where his hand

had rested while he watched the street.

He had liked watching people pass.

The woman with the red dog.

The boy who kicked stones

from one end of the pavement

to the other.

The postman who moved as if time

had personally offended him.

He knew their routines.

Not their names.

Names were not always necessary.

Afterwards, the street continued performing.

The red dog grew slower.

The boy disappeared into adolescence.

The postman retired

and was replaced by a young woman

with headphones and silver shoes.

The chair watched it all.

One evening, during a rainstorm,

I sat there without thinking.

The cushion sighed beneath me.

For a second, I felt I had trespassed

on something tender.

Then the window filled with drops.

The street blurred.

The room darkened around its edges.

I understood why he had chosen that place.

Not to escape the house,

but to witness more than his own pain.

Outside, people hurried

through different weather.

Inside, the chair held me

with the patience of an old wish.

I stayed until the rain stopped.

When I rose,

the room did not feel empty.

Only shared.

For those who know family can bond without speeches

Excerpt from “The Shared Blanket”

The shared blanket

was older than all the children

who fought over it.

Brown at the edges,

soft in the middle,

patched twice by my aunt

who believed anything useful

deserved another life.

It lived on the back of the sofa

like a patient pet.

During films,

it covered four sets of knees

and never enough feet.

During fevers,

it became a tent,

a mountain,

a small wool planet

where the sick child

was briefly the ruler.

After the argument

that split the family table

into territories,

the blanket remained

where it had always been.

No opinion.

No chosen side.

Only warmth,

asking nothing back.

Months later,

when my brother came back

with apologies folded badly

inside his pockets,

we sat at opposite ends

of the sofa.

The room was careful.

The kettle clicked.

Rain began

with its old confidence.

Without speaking,

I pulled the blanket

across both our knees.

He looked down.

Then laughed once,

not because anything was resolved,

but because some things

remember belonging

before we do.

For those who understand the comfort behind one chosen object

Excerpt from “The Blue Cup Theory”

My friend believed

that every house

had one cup

people reached for

when they needed comfort.

In mine,

it was blue,

chipped near the handle,

ugly if examined

without mercy.

Tea tasted better in it.

Grief felt lighter around it.

Bad news cooled

at a kinder speed.

She called this

the blue cup theory -

that objects become holy

by being chosen

over and over

without explanation.

When she moved away,

she left a box

on my step.

Inside?

Books,

a scarf,

three spoons,

and a blue cup

that was not my blue cup

but knew the same language.

The note said,

“For emergencies,

or Tuesdays.”

I cried then,

not because she was gone,

but because friendship

had understood the invisible shape

of absence.

Years later,

when she calls,

I still make tea in it.

The cup warms my hand.

Her voice fills the room.

Between us,

all that distance

shrinks to steam,

ceramic,

and the stubborn evidence

that sometimes love

learns how to travel.

For those who remember one bright night

Excerpt from “Two Bikes Under Meteors”

We left the bikes

under the hedge

because the field

was too wet to ride through.

You said

the meteor shower

would peak after midnight,

that made the sky

sound like a mountain

we were meant to climb.

We spread our coats

on the grass.

The ground was cold.

A train moved somewhere

beyond the trees,

its windows carrying

small lit rooms

through the dark.

At first,

nothing happened.

For a while,

there was only damp grass,

your sleeve against mine,

in the cold

finding our fingers.

Then one meteor fell.

White.

Sudden.

Gone.

We both gasped

like children

who had discovered

that the universe

was not showing off.

More came.

Not many.

Enough.

When we rode home,

the wheels clicked

through puddles,

and our shadows

wobbled under streetlamps.

For days,

I found grass seeds

in my coat pocket.

Small proof

the night

had followed me home.

For those who recognise love in what is done

The poem “No Small Love”

There is no small love

in the lunchbox packed

before the house wakes.

No small love

in the text that says

Did you get home?

though the answer

is almost always yes.

No small love

in the father warming the car

in winter,

then pretending

it was no trouble.

We keep trying

to measure devotion

seeking big gestures -

the room full of flowers,

the speech that turns

all heads.

But in most cases

love

arrives in work clothes.

It knows where the spare batteries are.

It saves receipts.

It learns which side

of grief to sit on

without touching the wound

unless invited.

My grandmother cut fruit

into perfect circles

and placed them before us

as if feeding planets

into orbit.

We ate without thinking.

Children do not know

when they are being blessed.

Now,

when I peel an orange

for someone I love,

I understand.

The universe can be held

in a napkin.

A hand can say

I love you

by passing you

one small piece

at a time.

For those who carry the sweetness after it is gone

Excerpt from “The Bowl of Cherries”

The bowl of cherries

sat between us

like summer had placed

its heart on the table.

My grandfather ate them slowly,

spitting stones

into his palm

with the seriousness

of a man counting coins.

He told the same story

three times.

We let him.

Some repetitions

are not mistakes.

They are the mind

walking a familiar path

to prove the gate

is still there.

Outside,

the garden burned green.

Bees worried the lavender.

Clouds moved

with no obligation

to human sorrow.

He offered me one cherry.

Dark red.

Almost black.

Sweet enough

to feel briefly impossible.

I remember his hands most.

Not the advice.

Not the war stories.

Hands stained with fruit,

lined like maps

of roads he never named.

Years later,

I buy cherries

when they first appear,

though they are too expensive

and never quite as good.

I place them in a bowl.

I sit by the window.

I eat one slowly.

The stone rests in my palm,

small and hard,

like the part of love

that refuses to disappear

when the sweetness is gone.

A collection of ordinary wonders

These twelve poems offer a wider glimpse into the emotional range of Stardust:

• Stardust at the Kitchen Table — the cosmic found in the ordinary, beginning with dust above a cold cup of tea.

• Before I Knew Your Name — a quiet love poem about waiting, recognition, and the moment the world begins to lean closer.

• The Woman Who Returned the Umbrella — a grief poem about shelter, memory, and the stories our loved ones leave in other people’s lives.

• The Scar on the Table — a family poem about an ordinary object carrying decades of memories, arguments, and love.

• The Garden Gate — a poem about grief changing shape through work, memory, and the small habits inherited from those we miss.

• Stardust — the title poem, where love, age, loss, joy, and ordinary people meet beside the sea.

• The Chair by the Window — a grief poem about a chair, a street that keeps changing, and the quiet presence of someone gone.

• The Shared Blanket — a family poem about argument, apology, and the wordless ways people come back to one another.

• The Blue Cup Theory — a friendship poem about a box left on the step “for emergencies, or Tuesdays.”

• Two Bikes Under Meteors — a memory poem about one bright night and the grass seeds found later in a coat pocket.

• No Small Love — a poem about devotion in practical gestures, fruit cut into circles, and the universe held in a napkin.

• The Bowl of Cherries — a poem about my grandfather, slow tenderness, and the part of love that remains after the sweetness is gone.

You can read more about the inspiration behind Stardust  here.

If these poems speak to something in you, the full collection is now on Amazon.

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