Villanelle · Grief
The Coat Still Hanging by the Door
1I leave your coat still hanging by the door.
2The hall is quiet. Let the hallway be
3the one place in the house you're gone no more.
4I gave your shirts to the charity store.
5I learned which drawer was hiding the spare key.
6I leave your coat still hanging by the door.
7The kettle that I filled for two, or four
8on Sundays, sings for one. Asleep, I see
9the one place in the house you're gone no more.
10Our friends are kind. They've said it all before:
11it's time. I nod as if I could agree.
12I leave your coat still hanging by the door.
Original poem © QuillOak — personal sharing is permitted.
“The Coat Still Hanging by the Door” by The QuillOak Editors — quilloak.com/poems/the-coat-still-hanging-villanelle
Quick facts
- Poem
- The Coat Still Hanging by the Door
- Poet
- The QuillOak Editors
- Length
- 19 lines
- Form
- Villanelle
- Themes
- Grief, Death & Loss, Missing You
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 19 lines · 6 stanzas of 3–4 lines
- End rhyme
- ABA in 83% of the stanzas — terza rima opening. The remaining stanzas vary, often through slant rhyme.
- Line length
- Mostly 10-syllable lines (pentameter length).
- Refrains
- “I leave your coat still hanging by the door.”“the one place in the house you're gone no more.”“I leave your coat still hanging by the door,”Repeated lines act as the poem's hinge or drumbeat.
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Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Original QuillOak text. Personal sharing is permitted; other reuse requires permission.
- Author record
- The QuillOak Editorstoday
- Source record
- QuillOak originalThe Coat Still Hanging by the Door, authored for QuillOak by The Quillery
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- Not recorded in the imported source
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 a1127a5c8d8581f9…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.