Stephanie Haveman - AmL Poetry, Prose & Quotes

14/08/2025

11/08/2025

What is Real Love?

What is love, if not the quiet
between storms,
the way two hands find each other
without asking for directions,
the way a heartbeat
learns another's name.

It is the slow undoing
of walls built for decades,
the choice to stay
when silence is heavy
and laughter feels far away.

It is not a promise
of no breaking,
but the unshakable belief
that we can stitch
ourselves whole again.

It is water in a desert,
light through shuttered windows,
and the truth we cannot unlearn
once we have tasted it.

© Stephanie Haveman - AmL Poetry, Prose & Quotes

11/08/2025

Please pray 🙏 for our Maya. She's in surgery right now. Bowel obstruction, dehydration, and severe constipation. We love her so so much. And her babies need her too. 💜🫂💜🫂

Update: She came through surgery well. 15 cm of intestine was removed. She only has very severe bloody diarrhea. The parvo test was negative, so it’s bacterial. She’s on antibiotics and will definitely be staying through tomorrow night as well. Survival chance: 50/50. We continue praying for her 🙏🙏🙏🙏💜🫂

Update: Maya made it through the night well. Her temperature is normal. She wants to eat, cuddle, groom herself, etc. If she keeps making progress like this, she may be allowed to go home tonight.

Update: she's doing amazing and is back home to recover from her surgery. We are so incredibly thankful voor all your prayers. 💜🫂✔️

🙏💜😊🫂

11/08/2025

Why Did You Leave?

You never told me
you were leaving,
only smiled
as if you would see me tomorrow.

The clock did not know
it was counting down,
and neither did I.

I would have held you longer,
spoken softer,
let you know
how much your presence
saved me from the dark.

Instead,
you vanished quietly,
like light slipping
through the cracks.

© Stephanie Haveman - AmL Poetry, Prose & Quotes

11/08/2025

There are no tears left
but my eyes are still heavy.

The grief has dried
into something harder,
something that will not wash away
no matter how I beg it to.

People tell me to cry,
but I have already
given the ocean
every drop I had.

Now, I only carry
its salt on my skin,
and the weight
of the waves inside my chest.

© Stephanie Haveman - AmL Poetry, Prose & Quotes

11/08/2025

"Why Build Me This Way"

If I was meant to be unbreakable,
why give me skin so thin
it remembers every touch?

If I was meant to be gentle,
why plant storms in my chest
that never pass quietly?

Perhaps the cracks were the plan,
beauty sharper in what survives.
Still, I wonder.

© Stephanie Haveman - AmL Poetry, Prose & Quotes

10/08/2025

Thorns & Honey

Your words were sweet enough
to make me forget
the sting beneath them.

I learned to taste carefully,
to find the thorn
before it reached my tongue,
but still, I swallowed.

Some loves leave you bleeding,
yet you keep the jar
just to remember
how it once tasted.

© Stephanie Haveman - AmL Poetry, Prose & Quotes

10/08/2025

Glass Bones

I learned early
how to walk without noise,
how to hide the tremble
beneath steady hands.

They told me I was fragile
and I believed them,
wrapping myself in caution
until I forgot the taste of risk.

But glass still shines,
even when cracked,
and I have learned
how to catch the light.

© Stephanie Haveman - AmL Poetry, Prose & Quotes

10/08/2025

I Still Remember the Grey

Before there were colors,
there was grey.
The kind of grey
that tastes like silence
and lasts longer than grief.

It wasn’t sorrow,
not quite.
Just numbness
with a heartbeat.

I lived there for years,
wore it like armor.

And even now,
as the world paints itself
in bolder tones,
part of me still glances back,
just to remember
how far I’ve come.

© Stephanie Haveman - AmL Poetry, Prose & Quotes

10/08/2025

The Melody of Rain

Each drop
hits something ancient in me.
A rhythm
older than pain.

Rain never arrives
with permission.
She just comes,
like grief,
like healing.

She doesn’t knock,
just opens the sky
and dares me to feel.

And I do.
I always do.

I let her fall
on the parts of me
still too tender to touch.

© Stephanie Haveman - AmL Poetry, Prose & Quotes

10/08/2025

Puzzle Pieces

Everyone tried to make me fit,
into boxes,
into silences,
into smiles that didn’t reach my eyes.

And for a while,
I tried.
I broke pieces of myself
to match the edge
of someone else's shape.

But I was never lost.
Just misplaced
in the wrong picture.

Now I gather every part of me
they said didn’t belong
and build a new image.
One that only I recognize,
but finally makes sense.

© Stephanie Haveman - AmL Poetry, Prose & Quotes