Prose-poetry collection
Three Names for Longing
Sehnsucht · Yūgen · Hiraeth
Choose this for lyrical, intimate prose-poetry about desire, memory, and the ache of what cannot be kept.
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Ebook · Paperback
Some feelings arrive before their names do.
A prose-poetry collection in sixty pieces, tracing desire, devotion, memory, distance, and homesickness through Sehnsucht, Yūgen, and Hiraeth. Lyrical and intimate, it moves from tenderness into hunger and from beauty into the ache of what cannot be kept.
- Lyrical
- Intimate
- At times sensual
“Some feelings arrive before their names do. They wait in the body first: in the throat before speaking, in the chest before remembering, in the hands before letting go.”
Inside the book
Three names. Sixty pieces.
The collection moves through three forms of longing, each with its own emotional weather.
Section 1: Sehnsucht
11 pieces
An inconsolable reaching toward a home, warmth, or belonging that remains just beyond the horizon.
Section 2: Yūgen
25 pieces
Wonder so immense and mysterious that beauty becomes more than comfort.
Section 3: Hiraeth
24 pieces
A deep homesickness for a person, place, or feeling that may no longer be reachable.
In Shruti’s words
Why I Wrote Three Names for Longing
I wrote Three Names for Longing because I have always been drawn to feelings that do not fit neatly into one language.
Some emotions are too quiet to announce themselves, but too persistent to ignore. They live somewhere between memory and desire, between distance and tenderness, between what happened and what we still carry from it. Words like Sehnsucht, Yūgen, and Hiraeth gave me a way to sit with those feelings without reducing them.
This book is not about dramatic heartbreak. It is about the softer, stranger aches: missing a place you cannot return to, remembering a version of yourself that no longer exists, loving beauty even when it is temporary, and finding comfort in the fact that some feelings are shared across languages, even when they cannot be fully translated.
Open this book if you love
For readers drawn to intimate, lyrical longing
Prose-poetry, desire, memory, tenderness, and feelings too large for one language.
- Nostalgia
- Memory
- Language
- Tenderness
What I hope readers take away
I hope readers feel less alone in emotions they cannot easily explain. I hope the book gives language to quiet forms of memory, distance, tenderness, and nostalgia. More than anything, I hope it reminds readers that not every ache needs to be solved. Some feelings simply ask to be understood.
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