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Start with your voice. Read it aloud, even softly. Hear where the words hurry, where they pause, and where they ask you to breathe.
Read it again. Notice one image that stays with you. You don’t have to explain it yet. A locked door, a blue cup, a hand reaching across a table: sometimes a small detail holds the heart of the poem.
Then ask yourself what changed between the first line and the last. Did the speaker discover something? Lose something? Leave a question open?
You may find a meaning the poet never expected. That’s part of reading. Your life meets the words, and the poem becomes something neither of you could have made alone.
Read slowly. Feel what you feel. Come back another day and see what has changed.
LJ Bechtel, The Unexpected Poet

We create poems because some feelings refuse to sit quietly in a sentence.
A poem gives grief somewhere to rest, joy somewhere to dance, and fear a shape we can finally face. It lets us say what we mean when ordinary words stop short.
We write to remember. To question. To make beauty from what broke us without pretending it never hurt. Sometimes a poem reaches someone we will never meet and whispers, you are not alone.
That is why we create poems. We leave a small light on the page, trusting someone will find it when they need it.
LJ Bechtel, The Unexpected Poet

"Still' is what describing me now,
Not moving even an inch.
Just "still",
Listening, waiting
For things to subside.