“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.” – Rita Dove

My Interpretation: Poetry does not waste breath. It cuts straight to the feeling – no fluff, no filters. It is the raw nerve beneath all the stories I have been too tired to tell in full.

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A scalpel for the buried feelings.

I did not fall in love with poetry.
It found me.
When everything else felt too loud, too broken, or too fucking fake to touch.

I do not write poetry to be cute.
I write it because I do not know how to scream properly in public.
Because grief & rage do not go quietly when you are folding laundry or paying the bills.
Because if I do not give the feelings somewhere to land, they start devouring the inside of my ribcage.

Poetry is not dainty.
It is not decorative.
It is survival.
It is the shape my voice takes when I am too tired to explain the hurt again.

I have written poems about:

• the miscarriage I was not allowed to grieve,
• the boy I loved who never got to grow up,
• begging someone to love me back,
• & crawling out of bed when my soul did not want to.

I did not write those pieces to be a poet.
I wrote them because I needed to stay alive.

When I read Emily Orta, it feels like someone finally gave my heartbreak a shape. She whispers what I didn’t know I needed to hear.
Hayley Grace lets the sadness sit without apology.
Josie Balka makes pain feel like poetry & survival feel like art – she softens the sharp edges but never dulls the truth.
Amanda Lovelace reminds me the princess does not need saving – she writes her own damn ending. She hands me a sword & says, “Cut your own chains.”
& R.H. Sin?
He writes like he knows what it is like to carry the bones of your younger self in your back pocket.
He does not sugarcoat.
He drops truth like glass & lets you feel every crack.

These poets do not just write.
They witness.
& sometimes, that is the most radical thing art can do.

Poetry is where I go to feel seen without performing.
Where I let my words be ugly, unfiltered, cracked, & powerful.
It is not for attention. It is not for applause.
It is so I do not drown quietly.

People act like poetry is fragile.
Like it is soft. Aesthetic. Sweet.
But that is not how I see it.

Poetry is a scalpel.
It is the tool I use when the feelings are too buried for prose.
It slices through the noise.
It tells the truth I am not ready to scream out loud.

When the grief gets heavy –
When I cannot stop replaying what was said, what was not,
When I feel made of glass & rage & unraveling thread –
poetry holds me still long enough to bleed without breaking.

I do not write poetry because I am soft.
I write it because I have survived too much to stay silent.

Because when I lost my first love –
When I gave birth & grieved in the same breath –
When I stood over ashes & kept breathing anyway –
No novel could carry that.
No conversation could hold it.

But a few lines on a page?
That saved me.

Poetry is permission.
To be messy. To be sharp.
To say too much & not enough at the same time.

It is not cute.
It is not quaint.
It is mine.

It is how I claim my voice on days I do not feel like I have one.
It is how I process. How I fight back. How I find myself again.

Xoxo ♡