Our world needs poetry more than ever right now, as we struggle to find connection across distances and differences. In bringing universal emotions to life, Lang reminds us that we all have more in common than we might otherwise imagine. And perhaps the most powerful thing we share––as she writes so beautifully in the poem that gives this collection its title—is a sense of a yearning, that singular emotion that looks longingly to the past and dreamily toward the future: “how long do we go on dragging our bodies day after day through this yawning, yearning world, searching for a glimpse of what could have been?”

September Love

(Originally published in Sea of Strangers)

How many years must we put between us to prove we are no longer in love? How many summers and Septembers, distractions and chance meetings, remnants of our sad, hopeful love in another’s look, an all too familiar gesture—how long do we go on dragging our bodies day after day through this yawning, yearning world, searching for a glimpse of what could have been?

Tell me there has been someone else like me, for you. That your experience of love has not been defined by the way I spoke your name into the hollow of your neck. Ask me if I have found the same kind of reverence anywhere else but in your slow, patient hands, your sea-salt lips spilling laughter mid-sentence, my heart rising in a crescendo like a wave ready to crash.

As you whispered to me, love is the only thing that time cannot touch.

After all this time, my love for you burns constant and true, my guiding light, my morning star. Time is testament to the relentless, unyielding power of this old, ancient love. A love I will carry with me, from eons to oceans to inches, back to you.

I’m Sorry

To the poem I put

into a book

before it was ready

I’m sorry I didn’t wait

a few lines longer

To the flowers

I picked before

they were ready

When sunlight

still shone

like a prayer

on their petals

I’m sorry

To the man I will

love and love

until the word love

no longer means

anything to anyone

I’m sorry I wasn’t ready

Dear February

You were always the month of goodbyes

standing sentry to autumn and her changing hues

Tall trees and dappled light on the city pavement

shifting under my feet, skirting the cracks

I think of my mother and what she lost one February

and there are things you know about me

that I don’t want her to know

Is my secret safe with you, dear February?

Like you I am caught between the city lights and the sea

torn between my love and my home

Like you I am the sun that keeps setting too soon

missing the summer even while I’m here

Self-Preservation

I used to think love had no limits—but I draw the line at myself.

Ingredients of a Poem

Someone you miss