#poetrythoughts

This century made performance unavoidable.

everybody is curating themselves constantly now.

personalities.

opinions.

faces.

pain.

and I think it has created a strange loneliness —

being deeply visible while rarely feeling deeply known.

people are branding themselves before understanding themselves.

and maybe that is why so much modern poetry revolves around identity.

people are trying to locate authenticity

inside environments built around presentation.

I think many young writers are exhausted.

not because they lack creativity,

but because they are trying to remain human

stop trying to sound poetic immediately. the best poems usually sound emotionally true before they sound impressive.

specificity matters more than drama. instead of saying: “I felt lonely.” say: “I started talking to myself in grocery stores because silence followed me home.”

let your poems breathe. not every line needs to be profound. silence matters too.

write like you are telling the truth to one person. not performing sadness for an audience.

your wounds are not your only material. write about survival too. about tenderness. about becoming. about identity. about strange small beautiful things.

read poetry outside social media. read older poets. read uncomfortable poets. read poets who make you pause.

stop fearing simplicity. simple writing can still devastate people emotionally.

honesty will always outlive aesthetics. eventually readers can tell the difference between curated sadness and lived experience.

write the sentence you are afraid to admit. that is usually where the real poem begins.

People think poets sit down inspired.

most days, I sit down haunted.

haunted people notice things differently.

we notice tone changes. hesitations. the exact moment somebody stops looking at us softly. the loneliness inside crowded rooms. the exhaustion hidden underneath “I’m okay.”

pain sharpened my attention before it sharpened my writing.

bullying taught me observation. discrimination taught me self-awareness. girlhood taught me emotional caution. loneliness taught me imagination. grief taught me language.

sometimes I envy writers who learned poetry through beauty first.

I learned it through pain.

through trying to explain experiences that did not feel explainable at the time.

I think that is why conversational poetry matters to me so much.

I do not want poetry that sounds unreachable.

I want poetry that feels overheard. human. slightly trembling.

I want writing that sounds like someone confessing carefully.

that is the kind of poetry that stays with me.

not perfection.