The cursor blinks on a blank page for longer than usual tonight. This isn’t my typical Wednesday evening writing session – no outlined structure, no word count goals, just the quiet hum of my desk lamp and words that have been pressing against my ribs for weeks. I’m not here to craft a perfect poem or spin some clever fiction. There’s something simpler and more urgent needed tonight.
Three empty coffee cups form a lopsided triangle on my desk, each containing the dried ghosts of earlier attempts to articulate this feeling. The poem happened much like this – in the unplanned space between intention and exhaustion, when my defenses were down enough to let truth slip through. That particular night it had been raining, the kind of steady rain that makes time feel suspended, and the words came without my usual internal editor standing guard.
What emerged was raw in a way that made me hesitate before saving the file. Not raw as in shocking or provocative, but uncomfortably honest in its simplicity. The kind of writing that feels vulnerable precisely because it has nowhere to hide behind clever wordplay or fashionable cynicism. I remember closing the laptop with unusual gentleness that night, as if handling something living.
The submission happened weeks later almost by accident. A scroll through social media brought me face-to-face with the competition’s call for entries – one of those moments when the universe seems to nudge you toward something. The guidelines mentioned seeking work that ‘speaks truth without ornamentation,’ which made me think of that rainy night’s creation sitting untouched in my documents folder. My finger hovered over the submit button with uncharacteristic uncertainty. Most of my submissions are accompanied by mental calculations of odds and strategic timing, but this felt different. I clicked send before I could overthink it, then deliberately didn’t save the confirmation email. Some part of me knew this piece needed to exist in the world without my constant anxious checking.
Now here we are. The poem – that quiet, unassuming collection of words I wrote simply because they needed to exist outside my head – will be printed in a book that will sit on shelves in libraries and bookstores. More startling still, it’s been selected from over 100,000 entries to receive recognition I never imagined when putting those words to paper. There’s a particular kind of magic in creating something for its own sake and having it resonate unexpectedly. It makes me wonder how many other honest moments are floating out there in the world, waiting for their chance to connect across time and space.
The desk lamp flickers slightly as I write this, bringing me back to the present moment. My coffee has gone cold, but the words finally feel right. Not polished, not perfect, but true. And perhaps that’s the lesson here – that sometimes the writing we’re most hesitant to share becomes the work that finds its people. The poem knew where it needed to go better than I did. My only job was to get out of its way.
The Birth of the Poem
The desk lamp cast a yellow circle on the notebook at 2:37 AM. Outside the window, winter branches scratched against glass like unfinished sentences. That’s when the words came – not in a dramatic rush, but as quiet visitors knocking at the back of my throat.
I didn’t set out to write anything important. The poem began as scribbles in the margins of a grocery list, between ‘oat milk’ and ‘dish soap’. Just something to release the pressure behind my ribs after weeks of swallowing words. The kind of writing you do with one hand while the other holds your unwashed hair away from your face.
What emerged was eighteen lines about watching morning light climb hospital walls. Not my most technically polished work, not what writing manuals would call ‘award material’. Just truth wearing its pajamas – messy hair, no makeup, the way we are before the world demands performance.
Three coffee cups hardened into abstract sculptures by dawn. The poem didn’t feel finished so much as abandoned, like leaving a conversation when both parties have run out of lies to tell. I saved it as ‘FebruaryDraft23’ between unfinished short stories and abandoned novel chapters.
For weeks it lived quietly in my documents folder, that poem about waiting rooms and the particular blue of dawn monitors. Until one rainy Tuesday when I realized: some words aren’t meant to be perfected. They’re meant to be released, like holding your palm open to let a trapped moth escape.
That’s the dirty secret about writing from the heart – it’s never about craft first. The technical stuff comes later, if at all. What matters is the raw, trembling thing you pull from your chest before your brain can sanitize it. Before you remember that international poetry competitions exist, before you consider what judges might want.
Winter branches. Hospital light. The way silence pools in certain rooms. These were my truths that night. Not strategic metaphors, not clever wordplay. Just my life pressing against my ribs, asking to be let out.
Sending It Out
The poem had been sitting in my drafts folder for weeks, untouched since the night I wrote it. I’d open the document occasionally, reread those lines about winter branches and morning coffee, then close it again. There was no plan for those words—they were just mine, and that seemed enough.
Then one afternoon, while scrolling through social media during my commute, the competition announcement appeared between vacation photos and food videos. An international poetry anthology calling for submissions. The post mentioned something about ‘celebrating raw, authentic voices’ which made me pause. My thumb hovered over the link longer than usual.
Three days later, I found myself staring at the submission page, cursor blinking on the ‘Upload File’ button. The rational part of my brain kept whispering: ‘100,000 expected entries.’ My finger twitched over the trackpad. What surprised me wasn’t the fear of rejection—that felt familiar—but the sudden tightness in my chest at the thought of those private words being judged. The poem wasn’t written for applause or critique; it was simply something true.
I clicked submit after exactly 182 seconds of hesitation (I counted). The confirmation email arrived immediately. I read it once, archived it, then went to my settings and blocked all notifications from the contest organizers. Not out of bitterness, but preservation. That poem had served its purpose for me already—anything beyond that would be borrowed light.
Weeks passed in their ordinary way. The submission became one of those small things we tuck away in mental drawers, the kind you remember only when cleaning out your inbox. I wrote other pieces, drank more coffee, watched the seasons change outside my window. The poem existed somewhere in the digital void, and that was fine. Better than fine, actually. There’s a peculiar freedom in releasing work without expectation, like sending a paper boat down a river just to watch it float.
When the judging period began, I made a point to avoid literary websites and writing forums. Not because I didn’t care, but because I cared too much in all the wrong ways. The poem had been honest when I wrote it—that was the victory worth keeping. Whatever happened next wouldn’t change the quiet hours when those words first took shape, when the only audience that mattered was the blank page and my own breathing.
The Lightning Strike
It came like most unexpected things do—buried in the spam folder. A Tuesday afternoon, the kind where you mindlessly clear notifications while waiting for coffee to brew. The subject line blinked between a pharmacy ad and a political survey: International Poetry Anthology: Update.
My thumb hovered. Three years ago, this would have sent me scrambling. Now, after enough ‘We regret to inform you’ emails, I’d developed the writer’s equivalent of poker face. The delete button looked safer. But some stubborn part pressed ‘open’ instead.
Numbers first. Always numbers in these things. Over 100,000 submissions worldwide floated past my eyes before the next line locked my breath: 1,500 selected works. The math did that thing in my chest—100,000 aspirations whittled down to 1,500. A 1.5% chance. My fingers went cold against the phone screen.
Then I saw it. My title in italics, third from the top in the ‘Contemporary Voices’ section. The room did that tilt-and-zoom effect from bad movies. I remember laughing—an odd, punched-out sound—before scrolling up and down six times to confirm it wasn’t some glitch where everyone sees their own name.
Coffee forgotten, I called my sister. ‘They’re putting my poem in a book,’ I said, and the words tasted foreign. Not the poem itself—that one had lived in my bones for months—but this aftermath. The International Author Award certificate glowing on my screen felt like catching sunlight in your hands; you know it’s real, but the warmth still surprises.
Later, I’d learn the anthology would sit in the Library of Congress. Later still, a box of author copies would arrive with my words in crisp Times New Roman. But right then, staring at that email, all I could think was how the poem had been written on a sleepless night when the words simply wouldn’t stay inside anymore. No thought of readers or recognition. Just me and the quiet, and something that needed saying.
Funny how the things we release most freely sometimes circle back to us, changed.
Why It Matters
That poem wasn’t written for shelves or awards. It came together on a Tuesday night when the apartment smelled like burnt toast and the streetlights made patterns on my notebook. Just me and words that needed to exist outside my head. The International Author Award now sitting on my desk still feels slightly foreign, like someone else’s coat that fits surprisingly well.
What lingers isn’t the recognition, but the quiet truth that those lines were honest when I wrote them. Not tailored for judges or trends, just a raw stitching together of things I couldn’t say out loud. There’s something terrifying and beautiful about releasing words you’ve written in private into the world’s noisy arena. Like sending paper boats down a river, never knowing if they’ll dissolve or reach some distant shore.
The math still stuns me – 100,000 voices clamoring to be heard, 1,500 chosen. My poem slipped through that narrow gate not because it followed some winning formula, but precisely because it didn’t. Judges’ comments mentioned ‘unexpected vulnerability’ and ‘quiet authenticity,’ phrases that made me realize they’d seen past the words to the pulse beneath them.
This experience carved two revelations into me:
First, that creative work born from necessity rather than ambition carries its own compass. When you write to survive your own life, the work becomes its own justification. Any external validation is just moonlight reflecting off something that was already whole.
Second, the alchemy that happens when private words find public readers. That moment when someone whispers ‘I felt this too’ transforms writing from monologue to conversation. My notebook ramblings have become bridges I didn’t know I was building.
Maybe we’re all just writing love letters to strangers we’ll never meet. The awards are nice, but the real prize is discovering your words traveled farther than you ever could, reaching places you’ve never been, settling into hearts you’ll never know. That’s the quiet magic of non-profit creative writing – it plants flags in invisible territories.
So I’ll keep writing to save myself, and sometimes, by some wild grace, those salvaged words will save someone else too. Not every time. Not on purpose. But when it happens, it makes all the solitary hours worth it.
And that’s enough.
