My Eyes?

Virginia Woolf, from a letter to Margaret Llewyn Davis, featured in The Selected Letters of Virginia Woolf

I just wanna love tf out of somebody & not look stupid

— Anna Akhmatova

Sometimes it feels like a lie to call myself a poet --

The world is a gorgeous, ethereal place --

All I've ever done is, do my best to use what little words I have to tell you what my eyes have happened to see, and, what my heart has happened to feel.

I'm just another of life's many plagiarists --

Stealing experiences for myself and pretending they're words born from my soul --

So what's the term, then, when the universe's machinations bring me across someone like you, and my heart is filled with so many words that I could write a thousand novels?

A poet?

A thief?

Or simply a woman with a mind, taken, filled to the brim by chance, with desire, need, and affection?

"Could you even describe the warmth of a glowing moon?" V. Rue, 2025.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, from a letter featured in Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky to his Family & Friends

If my poetry & prose don’t feel like this song; I won’t write them. ( I )