Haiku About Desire and Longing

Romantic haiku about desire rarely describe a body directly. They show the pull toward one. Ernesto P. Santiago sets a METEOR SHOWER beside A FIRST KISS, and the shower stands in for the heart’s speed. Melissa Anne Walker is more open about the body, with MY DELICIOUS SKIN and rhythm on perfumed velvet, though the poem stops there and leaves the rest alone.

Longing is a quieter cousin. Genevieve Fitzgerald writes of a VAPOROUS LONGING that seeps from the day’s crevices and ELUDES EVICTION, a feeling that cannot be turned out of the house. Melissa R. Patterson gives desire a month and a place: a FEBRUARY DAY and a forbidden love that is allowed to flourish ONLY IN MY MIND. The ellipsis does a lot, since it leaves the reader inside the thought.

In the bed

Manik Sharma’s poem begins MIDNIGHT, HALF-WAY and ends on HER SIDE OF THE BED, an absence that is also an invitation. Robert Beveridge turns ice into a map: ICE MELTS THROUGH FINGERS, leaving A TRAIL OF DROPLETS from lips to belly. The bed and the water carry the feeling, and neither poem shows a face.

Questions readers ask

Is a desire haiku the same as a love haiku?

They overlap, but the love page is about the long run of staying together, and this one is about wanting, with all the heat and uncertainty that comes with it.

How do these poems handle the body?

With a single image and no apology. Skin, a shared bed or melting ice carries the feeling, and the white space around it does the rest.

Can a longing haiku be about something other than a person?

It can be about a place, a time or a feeling without an object, as in Fitzgerald’s poem, where the longing is VAPOROUS and attaches to nothing in the day.

More themes to read

LoveHeartbreakRegretWriting and PoetryLonelinessAll themes

Last reviewed November 2026. Poems are the work of the poets credited and link to their pages in the original issues.