A Table Set For One Instead Of Ten – 25th June 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen

The steady hum of overlapping hands,
Hallways thick with the echo of our names.
School bells gathered us like windswept sands,
To kitchen tables of communal claims.

The city that we built, we knocked it down;
Your side of the bed is no longer warm.
Those names are now a room I walk around;
No audience left for whom to perform.

Streetlights shine where I no longer belong,
Just one plate set at a table for ten.
I am the echo that once was a song;
Now silence settles in my inkless pen.

Written for dVerse – juxtaposition. This is a commentary on the contrast between our past and current (or future) selves.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

The Wise Don’t Have ‘Problems’

The wise person understands expectations
Knowing when to keep their mouth shut
We should listen in most situations
When we mostly do anything but….

9 thoughts on “A Table Set For One Instead Of Ten – 25th June 2026”

    1. I’m reminded of a time past when I was talking to a twenty-something about her break-up with her boyfriend and she said that it was sad because when they were younger it was ‘us against the world’, something that I’m sure most of us can identify with. And then time moves on and the feeling of being against the world morphs into changing oneself instead. And slowly the echoes of the past fall away.

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      1. Oddly, growing a self makes one humbler about one’s place and significance in the world. Forgiveness and acceptance did a lot to improve my view of the past.

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  2. I am the echo that once was a song;
    Now silence settles in my inkless pen

    What transpired were just memories that brought one nearer to reality but these were good to keep us company. Wonderful write Shaun!

    Hank

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