Poetry is Love

Last night I finally got around to finishing Smiling Code, a Chinese drama I have been savoring and the following lines said by the the female protagonist caught my ear: "Life is hard but you are loved. The tide will eventually recede, the sun will rise as usual. Every step in the journey of life counts.” You may be wondering what this has to do with poetry but i believe poetry is love expressed through carefully chosen words, through metaphors that bridge our shared human experiences. When I sit down to write, I'm not just arranging words on a page – I'm reaching out across the vast expanse of human emotion, trying to touch something universal, something true.

Sometimes — certainly recently — my poems emerge from moments of profound satisfaction: the way a stranger stands up for themselves, or how a scene from a movie prompts echoes of laughter through my home, or in this case, a fictional character realizes that life happens but love is infinite. But more often, they come from places of uncertainty and struggle. To me, poetry isn't just about capturing beauty – it's about finding beauty in the hard places, about transforming pain into something meaningful.

I remember writing my first poem in college, the words came easily and the poem was a cliche but it was my creation and it purged something in me. I also remember the first time I wrote about coming to the US and learning I was black. The words wouldn't come at first – how could they? But slowly, like that tide I mentioned, they began to flow. Each line became a way to process, to grapple, to understand. The poem was as chaotic as my state of mind and imperfect, but it was real. And isn't that what poetry should be? Not simply a display of technical mastery, but a genuine attempt to make sense of our complex, messy, beautiful lives?

So when I say "poetry is love," I mean it's both the act of loving and being loved. It's reaching into yourself and pulling out something honest, something vulnerable, and offering it to the world like an open palm. Sometimes the world receives it gently, sometimes it doesn't. But the act of offering – that's what matters.

So I’ll keep struggling with blank pages and tangled emotions, keep writing and hope other writers will too. Your words matter. Your experiences matter. Even when the tide seems impossibly high, even when the sun feels distant – write. Because somewhere, someone needs to read exactly what you're brave enough to say.