Behind Closed Doors: How Poetry Writing Helped Me Express What I Couldn’t Say Out Loud

Throughout my life, writing has served as a tool by which I was permitted to understand the world and, occasionally, to survive it. I was born into a family that lived in a small rural town where privacy was a luxury that was not afforded to me. Diary writing provided no refuge; instead, it served to be an open invitation to invasion. Each private thought and unbridled feeling that I tried to write down was inspected and then cooked into common knowledge.

Consequently, I stopped writing. At the bare minimum, I stopped writing in a way that was understandable to other people.

It was then that poetry was opened to me—or rather, that time that I discovered the power of coded words. Metaphors and symbols came to be the beacons on my treasure chart. In this was my comfort that my readers would be forced to grapple and undertake a humble 'journey' to reach the valuable truths that I wanted to keep to myself. Poetry was my safe place, my safe haven, my protest. It was a way that allowed me to express myself without my 'paparazzi' understanding the deep reality of what they read.

One of my first poetry assignments for school, introducing me to the art itself.

I have worked with the craft of poetry for as long as my memory can account for, and then during college life, I began writing so rapidly I filled several notebooks worth. The techniques of poetry, like the use of symbols, verses, and the poetry craft itself, work like a muscle that develops through use until it becomes a habitual rhythmic pattern. This is not something that I claim only metaphorically but empirically. During my teenage years, I wrote so much poetry that by the time I was a college-going teenager, my offhand thoughts would naturally be reduced to rough poetic forms that often told stories inspired by the passerby, simple descriptions of the morning, or unconventional hypotheses that ranged from purely fictional to scientifically possible. Poetry came to me in whatever form, a vehicle for expression during times when verbal communication seemed impossible.

There exists a possibility within the keeping of secrets that lie within open view. I would write verses on the backs of napkins, the edges of books, or the back sides of receipts. To the unaware eye, the writing could be thought to be mere musings; to me, however, the writing held a strong authority. Poetry was my way of converting pain into beauty and making chaos and emotions understandable. This method was my way of saying, “I see you,” to the aspects of myself that I had hidden beneath the depths to conform and the artificially created conversations.

Upon reflecting upon those poems, I see a young girl struggling to free herself from the shackles of expectation and presumption. I see one who felt feelings deeply—at times perhaps to an excessive degree—and needed to be given a place to think without the weight of judgment. The beauty of poetry lies within its refusal to conform to perfection. It is messy, raw, and unfiltered—much like the feelings it expresses. This is the very reason why it spoke to me. It did not ask me to think it through; instead, it allowed me to feel and, through that feeling, to understand myself and the world around me.

Throughout the years, I have written thousands of poems. Some are stored within journals, some are scattered on pieces of paper, and some fell victim to the unstoppable passage of time, now being held only within memory. But poetry is more than mere catharsis; it is also a means to convey connection. As time went on, I found that my symbols and metaphors spoke to other people. What felt to me overly specific or private often spoke to other people in surprisingly deep ways. This is the poetry dilemma: the more specific and private the poetry is, the more universal the eventual effect seems to be.

Today, I undertake the task of organizing my favorite poems into a book. This project is an assertion of defiance against the parts of myself that still cower from complete exposure. To publish my poetry is to stand naked in a crowded room; however, I know that it is something that must be done. In those words, others will find the words that are missing from them—words that remind them that they are not alone in their complexities, contradictions, and commonalities. Poetry has served as my companion and has provided an understanding ear during times that left me speechless. Poetry has taught me that sometimes communication does not always require the use of sound. Behind each closed door, there is a story waiting to be discovered. Someday soon, I will keep going back to tell my own story—one verse at a time.