I do not write poetry for boys like you who search for periods and metaphors,
but I write for people whose fear has made them believe in miracles,
Fear conceived from cycles of submissions and rejections and submissions and rejections,
so they say, dear writers, do not check your mails first thing in the morning.

I do not write poems for girls like you who search for sarcasms and commas,
for the people I write of know more of these things than you,

Gone are the days when their hearts used to race as they read through the email slowly to avoid rejection,
and cursed whoever for the sugarcoating before the bad news,
so today, they receive a notification and they mouth ‘We regret to inform’ even before they read,
and their heart breaks more than the grieved black boys in their stories when they see that it’s true

I do not write poetry for people like you who speak only criticism,
and argue about who writes between A and B,
I write for people who second-guess themselves every morning and compare themselves to peers,
for people who forget how to write about their pain,
for people who ask why no one ever writes about the heartbreak of rejection… mails.

I do not write poetry for you readers today,
who comment ‘nice’ but barely notice the lines I thought about for two hours
I write for people who believe in miracles and write stories with happy endings,
for those who wouldn’t know how to act if their stories got accepted,
for those who cannot differentiate their works from themselves,
and for those who do not believe in miracles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Min An from Pexels