Meniscus: Notes for the Painfully Alone

Meniscus is a debut poetry collection that inhabits the ambiguous space between closeness and distance-where intimacy nearly happens, where connection flickers, where solitude settles in. Moving through urban nights and quiet mornings, these poems trace the afterimages of love: bars and bedrooms, streetlights and smoke, fleeting encounters and long silences. Again and again, the speaker reaches toward others, toward memory, toward versions of the self shaped by longing-only to discover what remains after.
Dark and melancholic yet never fully resigned, Meniscus is animated by a stubborn tenderness: the belief that warmth can survive miscommunication, that naming the ache is its own form of reaching, and that small moments-observed closely-still carry beauty. Intimate, atmospheric, and emotionally exacting, this collection offers a language for modern longing and the quiet courage of feeling it fully.

Ayon Shahed is a poet based in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. Born in Bangladesh, he has called several cities across Canada home-experiences that shape the restless, observant voice of his work. MENISCUS is his debut collection, marked by an enduring attention to memory and emotional intimacy.