Dear Reader, Writer, Feeler

I don’t know where you are
By a window, light tilting in like an old song,
or on a train, the world rushing past faster than your thoughts
Maybe somewhere quieter, where the air hums with your own company
Maybe in a rotten fantasy

Wherever you are  thank you

For reading
for letting words settle inside you, heavy or light,
for holding them when they ache,
for listening to strangers who somehow know your heart

For writing
for pulling something trembling and half-born from yourself,
even when the lines come out crooked,
even when no one is watching
You make something where there was nothing
That’s a kind of miracle

For feeling
for staying soft in a world that worships sharp edges,
for carrying joy and grief in the same, open hands,
dead and alive
for letting beauty ruin you, again and again
You are proof that tenderness survives

Poetry isn’t far away
It’s not precious, not locked behind glass
It’s built from the marrow of us
from the things we say and the things we never will

It exists because you do
It matters because you make it matter

Thank you for showing up
For the words, the silences, and the spaces in between

The world feels less lonely because you’re here

With love,
A fellow traveler