Nicole Sara

What is a promise, a dream?
What is a hope or desire?
What is a heart’s burning flame
setting all senses
on fire?

What is the mind’s
adventure
and which is the soul’s sweet ease?
What if the life’s sole purpose
is being caressed by

the breeze…

Do days always reach for remoteness
and dawns always shine so divine
casting far chime over moments,
driving refrain and
new rhyme?

When frowns or smiles,
or doubts
orbit each minute’s deep beats,
deeper yet heavenly rays
pierce from across

bluer seas…

Longing for further,
for warmer
yearning for promising skies,
golden triumphant tomorrows
beyond strained sinews
and eyes

Ploughing and steering steadily
ready to fall to your knees,
holding horizons at heart
finding what

paradise is…

Nicole Sara is a bilingual poet from Romania, with a master’s degree in Philology and American Studies from the “Al. I. Cuza” University in Iași. She loves languages and performing magic with words. Nicole began by writing poems in Romanian, and in 2016 she started pairing the originals with their translation into English. She finds inspiration in the beauty and intelligence of everything around her. Rhyming Dreams, Nicole’s debut collection of poems and original photographs, was self-published on Amazon in 2024, and she has recently published her second collection, The Blues and the Beautiful. Her work also appears in the literary magazine Spillwords Press, on the Masticadores platform, as well as inTranquility: An Anthology of Haiku published by Literary Revelations and the 2025 edition of Sunflower Tanka Anthology – Dreams compiled by Robbie Cheadle and Colleen M. Chesebro. A nature enthusiast, Nicole also loves exploring the outdoors and capturing images to share on her blogs and on photography sites. Connect with Nicole on her blogs at starrysteps.wordpress.com and doarnicol.wordpress.com (bilingual blog) as well as @nicoles.steps on Instagram.

This poem appeared in What We Hold On To: Poems of Coping, Connection, and Carrying On — Winter 2026, published by The Chaos Section Poetry Project. We’ll be featuring each poem from the collection individually in the weeks ahead. You can read the full collection or download a free PDF of the chapbook here.