Dina L. Relles
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dinalrelles.bsky.social
Dina L. Relles
@dinalrelles.bsky.social
930 followers 400 following 240 posts
writer • editor • road-tripper
dinarelles.com
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dinalrelles.bsky.social
lovely prominent placement for @ambersparks.bsky.social at @strandbookstore.bsky.social UWS!
photo of HAPPY PEOPLE DON’T LIVE HERE by Amber Sparks on display on a bookshelf at The Strand
November 28, 2025 at 7:20 PM
dinalrelles.bsky.social
tonight’s moon 🤍
photograph of the full moon through a clearing in the clouds and tree branches
November 6, 2025 at 2:41 AM
dinalrelles.bsky.social
“…the beauty of things that are ending.” — Annie Ernaux, Getting Lost
He didn’t say he would call. (In spite of myself, I think of my mother, the last time I saw her, in April ‘86. I said, “See you Sunday,” and she did not reply.) However, he did ask me if I was going to Salon due livre, meaning that we wouldn’t see each other before then. And yet, and yet, what tenderness, the last time. But that’s just it: the last planned meetings have the beauty of things that are ending. What if I were never to see him again, as with Claude G in the past? That is like death. I fear the worst (he’s leaving France, ditching me, etc.)
October 8, 2025 at 2:55 PM
dinalrelles.bsky.social
it’s been a minute since i’ve published anything, so i’m especially grateful that @matchbooklitmag.bsky.social gave this little musing on love + leavings a home.

you can read the full piece here: matchbooklitmag.com/mb/relles/departures
Departures by Dina L. Relles handed you the promised coffee with an apology: no sugar, no milk, I’m sorry. I don’t need those things, you said, and I fell in impossible love with you all over again. I’d come from my room carrying everything I wanted to happen that didn’t. Now the lobby was too bright and smelled like grapefruits and your face was weary in a way that felt intimate. You spoke quietly to me in the taxi, then held me twice at the terminal, which I took to mean you loved me too, despite.
October 6, 2025 at 4:26 PM
dinalrelles.bsky.social
Moonlight Diner, Denver, CO
photo of classic diner counter with turquoise pleather seats, black & white checkered floor
September 27, 2025 at 2:55 PM
dinalrelles.bsky.social
a Linda Gregg poem for late summer
Summer in a Small Town When the men leave me, they leave me in a beautiful place. It is always late summer. When I think of them now, I think of the place. And being happy alone afterwards. This time it’s Clinton, New York. I swim in the public pool at six when the other people have gone home. The sky is grey, the air hot. I walk back across the mown lawn loving the smell and the houses so completely it leaves my heart empty.
August 31, 2025 at 7:25 PM
dinalrelles.bsky.social
a late august morning
a photo of a small wooden table on the porch, yellow coffee mug, “Getting Lost” by Annie Ernaux, and the sun rise streaming through the trees
August 29, 2025 at 11:33 AM
dinalrelles.bsky.social
“I write in lieu of love, to fill that empty space above death.” — Annie Ernaux
a photo of the “Saturday 22” passage from Annie Ernaux’s GETTING LOST
August 16, 2025 at 2:55 PM
dinalrelles.bsky.social
Schmucker’s Diner, Toledo Ohio
a black & white photo of Schmucker’s Diner in Toledo, Ohio
August 13, 2025 at 10:44 PM
dinalrelles.bsky.social
august + endings 🧡
photograph of winding road + a Pennsylvania barn + a setting sun
August 5, 2025 at 1:21 AM
dinalrelles.bsky.social
Steve Edwards (@the-big-quiet.bsky.social) on Hopper, the heart, and trying to hold on…tinyurl.com/ybh9sesa 🤍
“The heart paints as fast as it can—remember, remember, hold this fast—but there’s no catching up, no getting it back, no going home.” — Steve Edwards, The blur is a brushstroke
June 28, 2025 at 1:18 PM
dinalrelles.bsky.social
i 🤍 Judith Kitchen
We ought to stay long enough to become intimate. To stand in the doorway and pass a few well-worn words.
May 17, 2025 at 11:27 AM
dinalrelles.bsky.social
took some favorite people to a favorite place 💚
photo of 4 children from the back as they skip stones in Sweet Arrow Lake (Pine Grove, PA)
May 11, 2025 at 10:21 PM
dinalrelles.bsky.social
this favorite by Lydia Copeland Gwyn 🖤
Lydia Copeland Gwyn Cotton Come from your perch on the other side of the room to where I sit with my book and my open pen. I’m still yours this evening. My arms are in your shirt sleeves, my feet in your gray cotton socks. The snow falls out the window in wet, lacy flakes, and the children sleep in their room upstairs with the white noise and humidifiers. You are still mine, and I still think of you in my bed like that. Like that first night we were together. I wore my Fay Wray dress and your body enveloped me like a dark hominid hand. Your lips tasted like cherry tomatoes. You were warm and wet and a little drunk. We fucked in the bedroom while my ex phoned and phoned the living room. Later the phone calls would turn into knocking on the screen door and then a twenty-dollar bill and a love letter taped to the window. It was a summer night and we had earlier seen the Big Dipper while we shared a beer in a courtyard. We walked back to my house and kissed on my back porch. We kissed and walked. I walked backwards. You braced the small of my back. Your feet danced me across the lawn and into the wall of my basement apartment. On the way inside, my hand feeling behind me for the open door, I looked into the night sky like an astronaut glancing back on a glowing Earth. I could see the beauty and motion, the past and present, the cities turning on.
May 7, 2025 at 3:56 PM
dinalrelles.bsky.social
“Forgive us all for trying to find in this small & violent miracle of life just a little joy.”

a Devin Kelly poem for your Sunday morning 🤍
The you changes. And I am no good at throwing out. Most attempts at cleaning up are a kind of sweeping under. We cannot change the size of the vessels we are, can only hope to control the spilling over, a forever drowning. Father taught me too much about love without his knowing. Forgive me if I lean too close. Forgive me if I kneel. Forgive me if I beg. I know a word can only do so much, the way you preached economy when I kept counting the ways in which we loved one another. In this city, I long for the hush that comes between one car passing & the next, how I learned to count the seconds between soft booms of thunder to gauge the speed of whatever storm brewed, kept coming. One summer my friend and I couldn’t get far enough away, saw the light night strike close enough to warm our skin. Maybe love is the burning hush it left behind. Forgive me if I fill vessels with all you never took away. Forgive me if I carry you along with me but never see you again. Forgive me for asking for forgiveness. Forgive us all for trying to find in this small & violent miracle of life just a little joy. Love has a way of reminding us how little everything else means or matters, or maybe love has a way of making everything else mean or matter more.
April 27, 2025 at 2:38 PM
dinalrelles.bsky.social
i love this little andrea cohen poem 🩶
Fellow Traveler She went everywhere with an empty suitcase. You never know when you’ll need to leave swiftly with nothing.
April 12, 2025 at 2:17 PM
dinalrelles.bsky.social
Linda Gregg 🖤
The Presence in Absence Poetry is not made of words. I can say it’s January when it’s August. I can say, “The scent of wisteria on the second floor of my grandmother’s house with the door open onto the porch in Petaluma,” while I’m living an hour’s drive from the Mexican border town of Ojinaga. It is possible to be with someone who is gone. Like the silence which continues here in the desert while the night train passes through Marfa louder and louder, like the dogs whining and barking after the train is gone.
April 6, 2025 at 3:26 PM
dinalrelles.bsky.social
we took a drive to see the sky
photo of night landscape: backlit trees, the moon, venus photo of night landscape: farmland, a lone lit house, trees, stars
January 4, 2025 at 1:54 AM
dinalrelles.bsky.social
“a love poem. a heartbreak poem. the price of the former is the latter.”

sometimes the author’s note is the best part.

i love @jadjosey.bsky.social’s poetry…3 new ones in Frigg: www.friggmagazine.com
Kind of World Jad Josey There are no sunk costs in love, though you might be a boat, though you may be sinking, treasure chest destined to find the bottom of the sea, of the blue-black lake, of the mattress where the scoop of your body stays well past your leaving. The cost might be high. The price may be unforgivable. Your heart. A golden locket. The friend you left wondering. All the time you spent. When you have nothing left, you still have everything you carry. What should sink suddenly rises, surprising even you. What kind of world is this where a heart can just stop beating? Jad Josey’s Comments A love poem. A heartbreak poem. The price of the former is the latter. I wrote this poem for someone who will likely never read it. Sometimes that’s the kind of world this is. And we carry on, buoyed by the knowledge that sometimes it’s different.
December 26, 2024 at 5:22 PM
dinalrelles.bsky.social
stumbling on an old inscription in a used poetry book is like becoming some small part of a stranger’s love story 📚✨
photo of a handwritten inscription on the inside cover of a book: “Lori, Into the world we enjoy together! Merry Christmas my love! Jon 12-25-02” blurred backdrop is an exposed brick wall with twinkle lights
December 24, 2024 at 4:07 PM
dinalrelles.bsky.social
grateful to live in a world with airport free book exchanges
photo of free book exchange at PHL airport photo of free book exchange at ABE airport
November 21, 2024 at 3:16 PM
dinalrelles.bsky.social
Devin G. Kelly (from: tinyurl.com/yytfwm9x)
Funny thing, love is — isn’t it? Salve for loneliness and cause of it. Over and over. Hold me and never let go. I’ve never known such a thing capable of so much.
October 1, 2023 at 2:23 PM
dinalrelles.bsky.social
meet me at the local diner that’s less than the distance of a song
photo of diner coffee mug on counter with ketchup, salt shaker, and traditional diner backdrop
August 21, 2023 at 12:04 AM
dinalrelles.bsky.social
posting a Linda Gregg poem to christen the space (hello blue sky 🩵)
Summer in a Small Town When the men leave me, they leave me in a beautiful place. It is always late summer. When I think of them now, I think of the place. And being happy alone afterwards. This time it’s Clinton, New York. I swim in the public pool at six when the other people have gone home. The sky is grey, the air hot. I walk back across the mown lawn loving the smell and the houses so completely it leaves my heart empty.
July 17, 2023 at 11:03 PM