the quiet calendar, traces thirty-one days of heartbreak, reflection, and renewal through spare, lowercase verse. What begins as a record of loss transforms into a meditation on healing. Each poem captures a day in the aftermath of an emotional unraveling—where coffee, silence, and small acts of survival become markers of time.
With honesty stripped of ornament, Keyes documents the slow return to self after betrayal. The poems move from pleading and confusion to recognition and peace, showing how grief can evolve into clarity when given room to breathe. The absence of punctuation and capitalization mirrors the speaker’s unraveling and reconstruction, allowing the quiet itself to speak.
By the final pages, silence becomes strength; the ache softens into acceptance. Keyes’s precision as both poet and surgical technologist is reflected in her measured language—each line deliberate, each pause intentional.
the quiet calendar is not a book about him; it is about the woman who learned to stop needing his silence to understand her own. Poignant and profoundly human, it reminds readers that healing doesn’t arrive with time—it arrives with truth.
the quiet calendar, traces thirty-one days of heartbreak, reflection, and renewal through spare, lowercase verse. What begins as a record of loss transforms into a meditation on healing. Each poem captures a day in the aftermath of an emotional unraveling—where coffee, silence, and small acts of survival become markers of time.
With honesty stripped of ornament, Keyes documents the slow return to self after betrayal. The poems move from pleading and confusion to recognition and peace, showing how grief can evolve into clarity when given room to breathe. The absence of punctuation and capitalization mirrors the speaker’s unraveling and reconstruction, allowing the quiet itself to speak.
By the final pages, silence becomes strength; the ache softens into acceptance. Keyes’s precision as both poet and surgical technologist is reflected in her measured language—each line deliberate, each pause intentional.
the quiet calendar is not a book about him; it is about the woman who learned to stop needing his silence to understand her own. Poignant and profoundly human, it reminds readers that healing doesn’t arrive with time—it arrives with truth.
author’s note
when grief kept time, i kept count.
this book began as a way to measure silence—
each day a note in the long song of letting go.
what started as survival became ritual; what began
as loss became clarity.
i wrote these poems in lowercase because healing
felt quiet, and lowercase made space for the quiet
to speak.
the quiet calendar is not about him.
it’s about the moment i stopped needing his
silence to understand my own.
these poems were written in real time, day by day, as the silence spoke.
—oquirrh keyes
day one
no us
i can’t believe you’re gone—
end of story. done.
i let my walls fall,
now i walk unarmed,
a zombie stumbling through life.
every corner of my heart
remembers your name—
coffee,
the heat of your hand,
your beard against my cheek.
no us.
i sit hollow—
a body waiting,
a voice that won’t come.
i don’t eat.
i don’t sleep.
please come back—
don’t forget me.
you rigged my circuits to your rhythm.
now the lights are out.
no us.
you don’t call.
you don’t text.
your silence—
deafening.
you’re home,
smiling at your wife—
pretending i don’t exist.
that thought
breaks me—
how easily
you pushed me away.
no us.
i grieve quietly—
lie when they ask if i’m okay—
a smile plastered on,
head nodding,
inside i’m dying.
we were supposed to be—
fate, destiny—
a love immortalized in a book.
instead, we are an
obituary. rip.
no us.
packing things to put away,
i found my antique playboy key—
the one that matches yours.
we found mine in an antique store,
that day we spent
pretending—
we were more.
no us.
tears fall,
memories—
overwhelming.
begging feels ridiculous—
and true.
would it change reality?
would my voice
call you back?
come back,
please.
no us.
reality keeps its distance.
memory keeps its weight.
there is no answer
that brings you back—
only the slow work
of returning to me.
so i practice small things:
a glass of water,
a breath,
a step.
no us.
only me,
building walls,
wearing armor,
more aware.
Before I launch into my review, I would like to say a huge thank you to Oquirrh Keyes and Reedsy Discovery for the Advanced Digital Reader Copy of this title. For anyone with their eye on this title, here is my personal review of the book to help you decide whether you are interested or not. All opinions offered are my own.
the quiet calendar, by Oquirrh Keyes, captured my attention for a few reasons. I was really intrigued to see what thirty-one days of grief looked like. From the synopsis, I assumed that the writer had been betrayed by her partner, who in turn made the decision to exit the relationship. It seemed to suggest that at the start of the journey, the author may have been begging and pleading to save the relationship, but over time found the clarity in identifying her boundaries and the strength to uphold them. The blurb outlines a journey that fundamentally sees the writer find themselves as an individual rather than relying on their partner to make up her whole.
One of the first things that struck me about the book was the lowercase type. I immediately thought of e.e cummings, but just as quickly forgot about him once I delved into the text because the similarities die pretty quickly after that. The explanation given for adopting this style is that ‘healing felt quiet, and lowercase made space for the quiet to speak.’ I could not help thinking that if this is how raw and poetic an author’s note could be, I must be in for a treat when we start to tackle the lion share of the book.
The next thing I noticed, and what stayed with me for the remainder of the book, was the utter beauty of the shaded pencil drawings. They were absolutely stunning and works of art that could exist independently of the prose they were illustrating. The exquisite pictures are not complex, there is no extravagance to them, they are simply small sketches that have a uniform technique applied to them that make fantastic use of shadows and blur to reveal doors, flying keys, cups of tea, things that are rather ordinary and normally not a point of interest, truth be told.
The book shifted in tone very quickly. By day 4, the writer was ready to forget her lover. Granted, in reality, it had actually been a month of longing, but for the purpose of the series, the emerging strength was welcome at this stage. Once the process of healing had started, it appeared to snowball and grow, which was inspiring to read.
In terms of favorite poems, I enjoyed day one, no us. Whilst it was a lengthy lament of grief, I liked the use of formatting to add emphasis including italics and bold, not to mention the use of different fonts. I also liked the powerful repetition of ‘no us’ throughout the text that really hammered the point home that it was over. This was quite the contrast to following poems where the lover returns hoping to breadcrumb his lover only to find that the ship had sailed. Day eleven, untethered was also a standout piece. It served as a powerful and emotive reflection of past behaviors, what they were intended for, what they elicited, and now what the writer sees them for since the removal of rose-tinted glasses.
As the days went on, I found it interesting how the poems got shorter. It felt symbolic of recovery, almost like Keyes recognized that she did not need to explore the feelings or use writing as a way to heal as much anymore. At the start of the book, there was a lot of hurt and grief to process, but as this gives way to anger, the author is seemingly defiant that she will not expend any more time than necessary on this man that she has packaged up and deposited in the past.
I thoroughly enjoyed the poetry collection and am eager for the arrival of Keyes’ second collection next year. I think the collection will appeal to people that have been burned by someone they have loved intimately only to have trust and boundaries broken. At times, the protests about not thinking of the betrayer felt a bit forced, after all, there is a whole collection of poetry dedicated to trying to get over someone and find oneself, but this adds to the reality of mending a broken heart. With no fault to be found in this book, I wholeheartedly rate it 5 out of 5 stars.