Sometimes a single line will sit up in the middle of my mess and blink at me, like it’s been waiting for me to notice. I remember reading about how one sentence can bring a whole story back, and I laughed a little because, honestly, there are days when I’m lucky if a sentence even looks my way. But last week, in that half-asleep hour when everything feels a little softer, one line just…arrived. Not a grand entrance. More like a quiet tap on the shoulder.
It wasn’t even a fancy line. Just something about my hands and how they remember softness, how they hold all the little histories my mouth is still learning to say. I didn’t plan it. I’m not sure I could have. But suddenly I could feel the poem pressing up from somewhere under my ribs, like it was already trying to make a home in my chest before I wrote anything down. My queerness, my Blackness, all of that gentle defiance, it’s right there in the line, even if nobody else would see it. That’s the thing: sometimes what’s most true is quiet.
I keep thinking about how my writing voice is shaped by how I move through the world—soft, a little sideways, always trying to leave room for tenderness. Maybe that’s why drafts are always a bit messy for me, like trying to find the right light for a selfie. I want the line to feel like skin, like laughter, like a memory I can touch. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t. But when it lands, I feel it in my body first, like a little yes humming under my skin.
So, I’m holding onto that line today. Not polishing it. Not overthinking it. Just letting it be what it is—a small return, a reminder that something gentle and honest can still surprise me. And that’s enough for now.