A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter B

Better half

Idiomatic Phrase
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

An affectionate idiomatic phrase for one's spouse or romantic partner, implying that they complete or complement the speaker.

Detailed Definition
Better half affectionately celebrates partnership and complementary balance in romantic poetry, portraying a spouse or lover as the essential counterpart that completes one's identity and emotional world. This idiomatic phrase highlights mutual dependence, harmony, and the joy of shared lives while subtly nodding to traditional gender dynamics or modern egalitarian bonds. Poets weave it into sonnets, odes, or free verse to evoke tenderness, vulnerability, and the transformative power of love, often contrasting individual solitude with relational wholeness. It deepens explorations of intimacy, sacrifice, and personal growth through union, offering warmth and relatability that humanizes abstract affections and reinforces poetry's timeless role in honoring connection.
Example
Example in poetry:
A tender poem might call a spouse the speaker's better half without mockery or cliché; In comic verse, better half can gently tease a married speaker's dependence; The phrase suits a domestic poem about partnership and shared life; A modern poet could question whether better half hides unequal expectations.
Additional Notes
Better half is a conventional affectionate phrase for a spouse or partner. In poetry it can be tender, humorous, old-fashioned, or ironic depending on tone. It implies that love completes the self, but modern poets may question that assumption by exploring independence, inequality, or loss. The phrase is useful in marriage poems, elegies, dramatic monologues, and comic domestic verse.
Also Known As
spouse partner
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