There’s something about the hush before a poem finds its legs that always gets me. When quiet lines begin to take shape, I feel it in my chest first—a kind of gentle thrum, like someone’s humming a song I half-remember. Sometimes I sit at my little table, mug in hand, staring at the page and waiting for something to move. I don’t mean inspiration, just the soft nudge of a word that wants to be real.
Last night, a line slipped in while I was thinking about my uncle’s laugh—how it fills a room, and how I sometimes wish I could wear my joy that loudly. The line wasn’t anything fancy. It was just, “My voice tries on brightness like a borrowed jacket.” It didn’t ask me for permission. It just sat there, honest and a little awkward, and I liked that it didn’t need to be perfect.
I always wonder if being Black and queer makes my poems softer at the edges. There’s a tenderness I carry, not because I’m avoiding sharpness, but because I know how much care it takes to be seen. I write slowly, letting the words find their own way, and sometimes they show me parts of myself I’d almost forgotten. It’s funny—how a draft can be all mess and hope at once, how a single line can feel like a small act of trust.
Sitting with that line, I felt something loosen. Not a big revelation, just the quiet relief of not having to explain myself to the page. I let the words be what they were, a little offbeat, a little soft, and somehow that felt like enough. Maybe that’s the real magic: letting the poem breathe, letting myself breathe right alongside it.