Everything That Stays - By Teenesh Kumaar
Written By: Teenesh Kumaar
Category: Poetry
Competition: Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026
Presenting a captivating poetic journey by Teenesh Kumaar, "Everything That Stays," part of the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026. Delve into the realm of emotions and relationships that this poem exquisitely captures, resonating with the universal themes of love, loneliness, and the subtleties of human connection. With a creative voice that is both intimate and profound, Teenesh Kumaar's work stands as a testament to the power of poetry to touch the soul.
About the Work
"Everything That Stays" is a collection of 108 quotes and short poems, each encapsulating moments of introspection and vulnerability. The work elegantly explores the nuances of love, the passage of time, and the small, often overlooked gestures that hold significance in our lives. Through vivid imagery and poignant reflections, Teenesh Kumaar crafts a narrative that is both deeply personal and widely relatable, offering readers a mirror to their own experiences and emotions.
Everything That Stays
Original Submission by Teenesh Kumaar
Everything That Stays
108 Quotes & Short Poems
TEENESH. K
________________
1
before you
i kept the good plates
in the cabinet
for a company
that never came
2
i was not lonely.
i was just very good
at being the only one
who knew
where anything was.
3
i used to think love arrived
like weather —
sudden, total,
impossible to prepare for.
no one told me
it comes like a tenant.
slowly. with boxes.
asking where to put things.
4
i had been practicing
for someone
who was still learning
their own name.
5
there was a year
i answered how are you
with fine
and meant
still here.
6
i learned to cook for one,
which is to say
i learned to make
exactly enough
and never once
too much.
7
the ache was not
that no one loved me.
it was that i had
so much of it
saved up
and nowhere
to spend it.
8
my friends said
you're too picky
and what i heard was
lower the bar
and what i said was
i have seen what happens
to people who do.
9
i kept a list
of things i would tell someone
someday.
it got long enough
to be a life.
10
i was so tired
of being the interesting one
at parties.
i wanted to be
the boring one
at home.
11
the loneliest hour
is not midnight.
it is six p.m.,
when the light goes gold
and there is no one
to say look.
12
i loved a man
who loved the idea of me.
when i turned out to have
a body, a mood, a bad knee,
he grieved
the girl he'd built.
13
i am not a fixer-upper.
i am a house
that has been standing
a long time
without help.
14
he said you don't need anyone
like it was a compliment.
i said i know.
that's the tragedy.
15
wanting is not weakness.
wanting is the proof
i haven't closed.
16
i was the friend
who was good in a crisis.
no one asks
how the person
who is good in a crisis
is doing.
17
i stopped asking
for someone.
i started asking
to be someone
worth staying for.
18
what i wanted was small:
a person who would text me
when they got home,
so i'd know the world
was still holding them.
19
i had a spare key
and no one
to give it to.
20
and then, one ordinary tuesday,
nothing happened.
except you laughed
at something i said
like it was
worth keeping.
21
we stood in the doorway
eleven minutes
saying goodnight.
neither of us
said the real thing.
the eleven minutes
was the real thing.
22
your hand
two inches from my hand
on the table.
i have never been
so aware
of two inches.
23
i learned your coffee order
before i learned
your middle name.
tell me that isn't
a kind of prayer.
24
you asked what are you thinking
and i said nothing
and the nothing
was a cathedral.
25
the first time you said my name
you said it like it was
already familiar.
i went home and said it
out loud
to check
it was still mine.
26
i have never been kissed
so thoroughly
as i was
by your almost.
27
before you touched me
you looked at me
long enough
to ask.
i think that look
is the whole reason
i stayed.
28
you moved my hair
out of my face
and i understood
every song
i had ever skipped.
29
we were talking about parking.
i was falling in love.
both of these were happening
at the same volume.
30
i kept the receipt
from that restaurant.
not for the tax.
for the date.
31
the drive home took forty minutes
and i did not turn on the radio.
i wanted to hear
the inside of my own chest
saying
oh.
32
you were not what i pictured.
you were what i'd have pictured
if i'd known
what i wanted.
33
i said i'm not looking for anything serious
and then i alphabetized
my bookshelf
in case you came over.
34
the terrible part of the beginning
is that everything
is still
reversible.
35
we stayed on the phone
after we ran out
of things to say.
i could hear you
loading the dishwasher.
i have never been happier.
36
you said
tell me something
no one asks you about
and i had to
sit down.
37
i counted your eyelashes
while you slept
and lost count twice
because i kept starting over
at the beginning of you.
38
your mouth
at the edge of mine:
the last second
before a whole life
changes its mind.
39
you said i'd like to see you again
and my whole body said finally
and my mouth said
sure, yeah, that could work.
40
i was afraid you'd be
a story i told later.
you turned out to be
the person
i tell the stories to.
41
here is what i knew
in the doorway:
if you kissed me
i would have to be brave
for the rest of my life.
42
you learned which side of the bed
i need,
and never once
made it a favor.
43
love, day one thousand four hundred and sixty-one:
you bought the good butter
because i mentioned it
once,
in march,
in passing.
44
i thought love would feel
like fireworks.
it feels like someone remembering
i take my coffee
without.
45
you don't say i love you
in the morning.
you say
i already fed the cat,
go back to sleep.
46
this is the vow
no one writes:
i will go to the pharmacy.
47
you held the umbrella
tilted toward me
the whole way,
and got wet on one side
for eleven blocks,
and said nothing.
48
romance is a hotel in paris.
love is you noticing
i haven't eaten.
49
you make the appointments
i keep putting off.
that is the poem.
50
i cried in the kitchen
about nothing
and you did not ask me
to explain.
you just kept chopping,
close enough
that i could lean.
51
we have a system now
for the groceries,
the bills,
the silence.
i did not know a system
could be tender.
52
you say drive safe
every single time,
like the words
are load-bearing.
maybe they are.
53
i have been sick in front of you.
undignified. grey. unlovely.
you brought the good blanket.
that's when i knew.
54
the fight about the dishwasher
was never about the dishwasher.
you knew that before i did
and let me get there
myself.
55
you laugh at the joke
i have told four hundred times.
not because it's funny.
because i am.
56
i used to think
being known was the risk.
it turns out
being known is the reward.
the risk was all the years
i wasn't.
57
love is you turning the volume down
because i said i had a headache
an hour ago,
and you have been watching
quietly
ever since.
58
you know how i like
the pillows.
i have never
told you.
you just
watched.
59
you keep my sister's birthday
in your phone.
you have never once
been asked to.
60
we don't say much at breakfast.
this is not a problem to solve.
this is what safety
sounds like.
61
love is you learning
to read the difference
between my tired
and my sad.
62
the way you say we
when it would be easier
to say i.
63
you were tired.
i was tired.
you made the tea anyway.
one of us always
makes the tea anyway.
that's the whole architecture.
64
you are not my other half.
i was whole and lonely.
now i am whole and home.
65
i want to be old with you,
which is a way of saying
i want to be bored with you
in a house we know
by heart.
66
you touched my back
walking through a doorway,
just briefly,
just to say still here.
you have done this
ten thousand times.
i have counted none of them
and all of them.
67
if you want to know
if you are loved,
don't ask about the flowers.
ask who knows
your prescriptions.
68
we did not stop
loving each other.
we stopped saying so
out loud,
which is almost
the same speed.
69
the silence changed texture.
i can't explain it
except to say i noticed
when you stopped finishing
my sentences.
70
you were in the room.
you were not in the room.
i have never been so lonely
beside anyone.
71
we started being polite.
that's how i knew.
72
i said i'm fine
and you believed me,
which was the first time
you ever took
the easy answer.
73
love does not leave in a slam.
it leaves in a series
of small unremarked withdrawals,
like money from an account
neither of us
is checking.
74
we became
excellent
roommates.
75
you told the story about the trip
and left out the part
where i was there.
76
i went through our old messages
looking for evidence
and found it,
which was worse.
77
i wanted you to fight with me.
indifference is the only thing
i can't argue with.
78
we slept back to back
like two people guarding
different doors.
79
i kept score
in a place i didn't admit
i had.
you did too.
neither of us was winning
a game we were both
losing.
80
the hardest part
was that you were still kind.
it would have been easier
if you'd been cruel.
i could have left
a cruel man.
81
i said do you still —
and you said of course
too fast,
and the too fast
was the answer.
82
we went to dinner
and talked about the parking,
the weather,
the food.
we had become strangers
who knew each other's
medical history.
83
we stopped touching
in the kitchen.
that was the first country
we lost.
84
i missed you
while you were sitting
across from me.
i did not know
that was possible
until it was
the only thing i felt.
85
i almost left on a wednesday
over a mug.
that's how it goes.
never the big thing.
the ninetieth small thing.
86
you said
i don't know how to reach you anymore
and i wanted to say
i've been here, right here,
but i hadn't been.
neither of us had.
87
we sat on the kitchen floor
at two in the morning
and said true things
for the first time in a year.
it was not romantic.
it was surgery.
88
the question was never
do we love each other.
the question was
are we willing to be inconvenienced
by it again.
89
we did not fall back in love.
we walked back.
slower.
looking where we stepped.
90
you started asking me
questions again.
real ones.
i had forgotten the sound
of being
curious about.
91
forgiveness is not a moment.
it's a practice you do
on tuesdays
when you'd rather not.
92
i chose you on a day
i didn't feel like it.
that one counts
double.
93
staying is not
the absence of leaving.
it is a thing you do
with your hands.
94
you said i'm sorry
without and or but or if.
just the two words.
load-bearing.
whole.
95
we made new rules.
they were boring.
they worked.
i have stopped believing
that boring and beautiful
are different words.
96
i tell you now
when it's small.
that's the change.
i don't wait for it
to become a war.
97
i don't need you
to be sure.
i need you
to keep showing up
unsure.
98
the second time you kissed me
in that kitchen
was better than the first time
in that doorway —
because the first time
i didn't know what it would cost
and i kissed you anyway.
the second time
i knew.
and i kissed you anyway.
99
love is not the fireworks
or the fault line.
it's the repair.
the ugly seam
where two people
decided to hold.
100
we keep the cracked bowl.
you know why.
101
i am not easy to love.
you have never once
told me i was.
you just
did it.
102
some mornings i watch you sleep
and feel the same thing
i felt in that doorway:
that i will have to be brave
today.
and then i am.
103
what i want at the end
is not a great love story.
it's a long one.
badly told.
full of tuesdays.
104
you are the person i want to tell.
whatever it is.
first.
that's it.
that's the definition.
i've stopped looking
for a better one.
105
if you are reading this
and no one has stayed yet —
i need you to know
the ones who save you
often do it quietly,
without knowing,
in a kitchen,
over years.
keep the good plates
out.
106
if this book ever
ends up in someone else's hands,
i hope they are
the kind of person
who underlines.
107
i have been loved loudly
and it did not hold me.
i have been loved quietly
and i have not been dropped
since.
108
in the end
i will not be able to name
the moment you became
my life.
there wasn't one.
there were ten thousand tuesdays,
and you, every time,
making the tea
anyway.
About the Competition
The Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026 by Hashtag Kalakar is a prestigious platform celebrating the art of words. Encouraging writers from around the world to share their unique voices, this competition highlights diverse narratives and fosters creative expression. Participants engage with the global literary community, showcasing their talents and contributing to the ever-evolving tapestry of contemporary literature.
We extend our heartfelt gratitude to Teenesh Kumaar for sharing "Everything That Stays" with us. Your participation in the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026 enriches the literary landscape, and your work brings depth and insight into the human experience. Thank you for your contribution, and we look forward to witnessing more of your creative journey.
About Hashtag Kalakar
Hashtag Kalakar is a creative platform dedicated to providing artists, writers, singers and other creative talents with opportunities to showcase their work and reach wider audiences through competitions, features and creative initiatives.
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