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07/14/22
Poetry night @ Contrary space in NYC
On a summer eve in 2022, new friends gathered in the Contrary office space in NYC to write poetry.
We were given two words and tasked with crafting a poem around them.
I had forgotten about this exercise until I found the crumpled piece of paper I scribbled the poems on. (It’s 2025 now).
I remember feeling a bit out of place because I don’t consider myself a poet. And there were definitely some poets present. But I still wrote.
Here’s what I came up with:
empty/wobble
The flush on my cheeks feels
like a warm embrace.
Why is it only when the bottle is empty,
that I no longer am?
I wobble home on my own.
power/skin
It was always someone else
who I wanted to be,
whose shoes I wanted to stand in,
who I wanted to stand beside.
It wasn’t until now
that I realized the power
of living in
my own skin.
ocean/shark
I sometimes think that life is like the ocean:
vast, unlimited, infinite
touching every corner of land, life,
and possibility.
But we stay on land,
too scared to jump in the water,
for what if we come across…
a shark?
