The Doorway Held
I didn’t hear it boil. Just one click—like a throat clearing before a sentence that never comes. The tea was already steeping, water deepening around the leaves. There was no steam, no second sound. Only the weight of being nearly warm.
Nothing burned today.
The silence shaped like your hand
stayed in the doorway.
Dara Laine (she/her) is a poet and member of the LGBTQ+ and disabled communities, based in Baltimore and originally from a hay farm in New Jersey. She returned to poetry following the sudden death of her father. Her work explores love, loss, and the sacred ordinary through restrained lyricism, domestic detail, and emotional undercurrents.