“Not a Poet at All” … A Reflection
A reflection on words written to survive
I wrote this poem in 2015—
in the middle of my storm.
Not after it passed.
Not when the skies cleared.
But while the rain was still relentless,
while the ground beneath me felt unsteady.
I did not write it to create something beautiful.
I wrote it because I needed to breathe.
Putting into words the battle I was going through became my way of surviving—
literally breathing, one line at a time,
learning how to overcome one day at a time.
Back then, I felt almost apologetic as I wrote,
as if I needed to explain myself in advance:
“Not a poet at all…”
Because I truly believed I wasn’t one.
What I was, in that moment, was a soul overwhelmed.
A heart ravaged and consumed by life’s blows.
Words did not arrive as art, but as necessity—
a lifeline thrown into deep waters.
There were no fascinating verses, no elegant prose.
Only echoes of teardrops.
Only mist.
Only storms.
Yet looking back now, I understand something I could not see then:
Sometimes, writing is not about being a poet.
It is about staying alive.
When the weight becomes too heavy, the soul looks for air.
Some cry.
Some pray.
Some remain silent.
I wrote.
I wrote to breathe through the pain.
I wrote to give shape to what had no name.
I wrote because facing the storm—word by word—was the only way I knew how to keep walking.
The poem says “I am no poet at all”—
but perhaps that was never the truth.
Perhaps I was simply a human being in the midst of battle,
doing what humans have always done in their darkest hours:
turning pain into language so it would not destroy them.
If you have ever written from the middle of your own storm,
if you have ever used words just to make it through the day,
know this:
You do not need to be a poet to write what is real.
You do not need polished lines to justify your pain.
Sometimes, surviving is the poetry.
This poem remains exactly as it was written.
Unedited. Unpolished.
Because it carries the breath of a past self who was fighting to stay afloat.
And to that self, I say now:
You breathed.
You endured.
You overcame—one day at a time.
