Not Everything Is a Poem

Some Things are just Empty Rooms

Not everything is a poem.

Some things are just

the leftovers of silence,

the shape your body makes

when no one’s watching.

Some things are just

empty rooms

that still carry your name

even when you don’t answer it.

The dishes undone.

The lamp that flickers.

The dog that waits

long after you’ve turned away.

Not everything can be salvaged

with metaphor.

Some things just sit there—

unresolved,

unrhymed,

unfixed.

There are days

when even language

is too loud.

When the only thing you have left

is the space between breaths

and the feeling that even your skin

wants to leave.

Some things don’t want to be beautiful.

They want to be real.

They want to be raw.

They want to rot quietly

until they’re no longer asked

to perform.

So no—

not everything is a poem.

Some things

are just the cold chair you didn’t sit in,

the closed door you didn’t open,

the version of you

that didn’t make it out of the dark that day.

And maybe that,

too,

is a kind of truth

worth writing down.

(So everything is a poem, after all.)