The Poem I Never Meant to Write

I did not aspire to be a poet.

I had poetry chase me like rain pours onto houses — sudden, noiseless, unavoidable.

It was a silence, when the world outside me slowed to a crawl but the inside of my head was louder than ever before. I had no clue how to speak what I was doing, but the words lingered within my chest, thudding against my ribs to be released.

I wrote, therefore.

Not in rhyme or by rule or sense — just with brutality.

I wrote words in the margins of checks, on the reverse sides of receipts, in the notes program at 2:17 a.m. when sleep eluded me. They weren't for anyone to read. They were for rescuing me.

And they did, somehow.

The Poem I Never Wrote

I stitched a silence into my smile,

so that no one could hear the murmur within.

Wore laughter as a shield,

while my soul whispered: hide.

I danced with the shadows

as though they were friends,

and penned to the moon

when the day would not cease.

I relinquished my secrets to stardust,

my tears to the sea,

and every broken sentence

was a portrait of me.

Now I build bridges from paper,

and truth from the night.

And that's how I came upon

the poem I never meant to write.

It wasn't about perfect metaphors or well-sharpened lines. It was about truth. The kind that cracks open a still heart and lets the light in.

Poetry instructed me that pain can be beauty. That healing isn't always loud. That sometimes, the boldest thing we can do is whisper I feel this and have someone else echo, me too.

I started publishing my words on the web, nervously at first. But the response was like echoes — strangers telling me that I had put into words what they had felt. That they had felt understood. That my careless late-night writings made them feel a little less alone.

That’s the magic of poetry. It travels through time zones and hearts, through screens and scars. It reminds us we’re not the only ones carrying too much and saying too little.

If you’re holding back your words, waiting for them to be “good enough” — stop. Write anyway. Your poem doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be yours.

And maybe, and just maybe, it will be the one that another person never even knew they needed to read.