Go to original post

i’ve been staring at this photo for a while because i still can’t believe this book is finally real.

this collection is a year late.

manuscript did disappear. last july, my phone unexpectedly reset and the draft i carefully arranged — the themes, the order of the poems, the ones i chose to keep and the ones i quietly let go of — was suddenly gone.

the poems still existed somewhere in old posts and scattered notes, but the book itself no longer did.

and i think that was the hardest part.
having to gather myself again.
having to remember what this collection was trying to become.

there were moments i almost stopped working on it entirely because starting over felt too overwhelming. but little by little, with so much encouragement from people around me, i found my way back to these pages.

so posting this feels both terrifying and tender to me. like sharing something i almost never got to finish.

but here it is.
printed. held. real.

i’m still shy about calling myself an author so for now i’ll just say i aggressively formatted my feelings into a book.