I’ve been thinking about repetition lately — what it feels like to build pressure without knowing where it’s going to land. I sent out my twentieth submission this week. Another rejection came back. Polite. Brief. Efficient. At the same time, a new business I launched — something playful, something that felt like me — is still quiet. No orders yet. No proof of traction. Just the hum of effort waiting for response. This is the part no one romanticizes. The stretch where you ke

It feels ridiculous declaring myself a poet. I’m living in a constant state of audition and submission — half in a world of observation and self-talk, half in a delusional reality where this somehow works out. The days of having a title are over. I’ve got nothing to offer at a dinner party except, “Metronome, my three-part poem about desire exhaling between my thighs, has been rejected.” But I don’t offer that up. I just say I’m still teaching yoga and trying to get published

I am a poet This is something I always knew about myself, but infrequently said out loud. I thought someone else had to grant me the title— an editor, a book deal, a stranger with authority, some imagined jury of literary adults who would someday tap me on the shoulder and deem me legitimate. For years, I kept writing in private like it was something I needed to hide or something I hadn’t earned yet. I treated poems like secrets instead of evidence. But lately, something shif