Hi everyone,
Welcome to 365 Days of Poetry & Honesty <3 It’s been a while, but I'm back and feeling stronger and a lot more hopeful about life! I won’t go into detail but I got ill again, ended up in hospital for a week, and since then I’ve just been trying to get my strength back. And even though I’ve spent the past couple weeks feeling fragile, I also have to acknowledge that my body has a way of forcing me to pay attention to what I’m avoiding, or trying to push past, and sometimes you do have to shoulder on, but that doesn't mean that you should be forever hurtling forward; at some point you have to pause, breathe, untangle the knots inside, take stock what of truly matters - and by that I mean what makes your heart sing - and breathe again. & It's not that I did a bunch of soul searching, I was in too much pain, but I kind of fell in love with my youth again, and what it means to have a body that can walk, run, dance, spin etc. Movement is a blessing, and I really hated that I could barely get out of bed. But yeah, and I have a renewed sense of what it means to be in this world, and what I have to do to protect my heart because I’m what matters.
Anyways, enough with all of my life-affirming revelations, here are some songs that have gotten me through the past couple of weeks!
Monday
Something sexy !
Tuesday
I actually wrote this couple of weeks ago, & I think you can feel how emotionally volatile I was
Wednesday
There's something a little unhinged about this poem but I love it, it's like a testament to strength & also madness maybe, in the sense that when the goal is surviving, you do what you have to do and I guess for me, metaphors are where I feel the freest ! I hope that make sense with the context of this poem.
Thursday
A love poem! Something soft.
Friday
The air feels tense with misogyny.
I wrote this reflecting on being hospitalised, and what it felt like losing a week of my life. I love my body so much more now, simply for the fact that I’m standing, and everything else fades to the background because what matters is that I’m alive, that I can write poetry, that I can eat & dance, I exist.
Saturday
My anthem for summer! I want the wild!!
Sunday
Two poems for Sunday. The first by Gwendolyn Brooks & the second, a fragment from a poem by Mikko Harvey.
Thank you for reading this week’s newsletter. Let me know your thoughts on the poems ❤️
With love,
Phoenix