we were a country by Andra-Elena Albisoru

We arrived with the same hunger,

nineteen and unprepared,

dragging whole countries behind us,

Romania folded into a suitcase.

The Netherlands was gray and orderly,

a place that didn’t know our names,

so we lent them to each other.

We became family by default.

We learned each other’s grief

before we learned the streets.

Celebrated birthdays in borrowed kitchens,

holidays that tasted wrong

until we laughed them into softness.

We held boy heartbreaks like bruises,

pointed out the ache,

promised it would fade.

When one of us fell,

the other already knew where the floor was.

Back then, the world made sense

because we faced it side by side.

I didn’t notice when it shifted.

That’s the truth.

I mistook silence for tiredness,

distance for growing up,

the ache in my chest for nothing urgent.

So the break arrived all at once

not loud, not cruel,

just final.

One day there was no one

to split memories with,

no witness left

to remember who I was becoming.

I grieved you like a place,

not a person…

a home that no longer answers

when you knock.

Then the words began to gather.

Quiet at first,

then relentless.

I wrote because there was nowhere else

to put you.

Because the memories had nowhere to land.

Because something in me refused

to let it fade without a trace.

These poems

are built from that absence

from unanswered messages,

from birthdays that passed unshared,

from the ache that comes suddenly

and leaves just as quietly.

I still grieve you sometimes

not the same way.

Grief changes shape

when you let it breathe.

Some days it’s heavy.

Some days it’s gratitude.

Because losing you

is how I found this voice.

Because without us,

none of this would exist.

We are not inseparable anymore.

But we were.

And that was enough

to make something lasting

out of the loss.

Andra E. Albisoru left her home country of Romania in 2017, moving to the Netherlands to pursue her legal studies. As a child, she loved to write, but life eventually took over, and her creativity was quietly tucked away in a forgotten corner of her mind. A year ago, she picked up the pen again and began writing about her life: her identity struggles, loneliness, love, and the rediscovery of parts of herself she thought she’d lost. She realized she had always lived a life worth writing about, and now, nothing is holding her back.