Poetry used to be difficult for me to grasp. A book full of symbols and metaphors who's pages needed an answer key. I would read a poem and feel nothing except the quiet embarrassment of someone who doesn't get the joke.

I don't remember exactly why I picked up that book. Maybe I was desperate for something that didn't ask too much of me. Maybe I just needed words that weren't mine.

But somewhere between the first page and the last, something shifted.

A line would stop me cold. Not because it was impressive or ornate, but because it was true. Giving that feeling you've carried alone for years suddenly a name. 

From that poetry gave me something I didn't know I needed. Not answers, but company. The sense that my feelings were not outsized or embarrassing or too much, but simply human. Deeply, quietly, ordinarily human.

I started paying attention differently after that. To the particular weight of a gray afternoon. To how grief lives in small tasks, like folding laundry or washing a single mug. To the soft and unremarkable moments that hold, if you look closely enough, entire worlds.

The poets who shaped how I see, and how I write, are the ones who do that looking without flinching. Donna Ashworth, who speaks plainly and without apology about the things we carry. Mary Oliver, who stood in fields and forests and asked us to pay attention, truly pay attention, to the life moving all around us.

This page is where I try to do the same. Imperfectly. Honestly. With care for the small and the real.

I hope something here makes you feel a little less alone.

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Nevaeh