Nicole Sara

I forgive winters their harsh silences,
their inexistent arrivals
timidly scattered
on the winding pathways
within me…
I step along your mild quietness
in every sigh
treading carefully on your shadows
among time drops always the same…

You always open the door,
and then a window
for my flight
not begun yet…
And I rewrite the same verse
from the abyss
always lost and found
in your eyes
when you rekindle the stars…

I sprinkle white petals of togetherness
all along the labyrinth humming deep echoes
and slowly
fading away in the mists…
Where you lost my way
not entwining your dream
with mine

…but fragrantly leaving behind
the warmest
and always the last
forever

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. You can read the full collection or download a free PDF of the chapbook here.