A Testament to When I Loved You

Introduction

Hello readers!

This book is a compilation of various unedited poems that I had typed up or scribbled down sometime across the span of five months. Originally, it started off as a "challenge" to myself: a goal to write a poem a day to capture the feelings or events that transpired. In part, it can be considered a diary of poetry, although eventually days (or even months) were skipped and void of writing.

Although at first I shared some of the poems with my friends, the writings eventually grew to become more personal so I stopped sharing them, save for a select few. I realized that poetry became an outlet for me to deal with overwhelming feelings that I did not understand then—a terrible mix of frustration, loneliness, bitterness, anxiousness, uncertainty, love, hope, happiness, gratitude, and longing. I wrote these feelings down, in ways that I could grasp, and although I may not be the best poet out there (on top of simply writing freestyle the entire time), these pieces all mean a little something special to me.

Now, it has been one month in and I realized that I have stopped writing the daily poems. Upon reflection, I realized that all of these emotions fell under an umbrella and a story that has now come to a close (more or less). This realization also came with another: what is the point of keeping these poems and stories to myself? If they are written already, they might as well be compiled into a single collection and shared. If they are read, perhaps there will be others who can relate to the same feelings. But if they are not, at the very least, they have a home where they can reside together.

Thus, I present to you all A Testament to When I Loved You: a series of poems I wrote from November 2021 – March 2022.

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Side Note:

An idea that I really enjoyed exploring in these poems was the ambiguous use of the word "you," because as a reader you have no idea who I am talking about, but as the author, I know exactly who I am addressing. For me, I liked to use "you" to represent a wide array of subjects: sometimes "you" stood for a friend, other times a parent or a sibling. "You" could also stand for an idea, a place, or a time; and sometimes in the same poem, "you" stood for different people. "You" as a word just feels more personal to me—one does not need a name nor a title to understand the essence of the subject in which they are addressing.

The title of this collection is meant to evoke the same idea: these poems are a testament to when I loved (you). Although admittedly for the majority of the time it stands for a specific individual, it also represents the many other individuals written into the lines of these poems.

In any case, thank you for giving this collection a read, and I hope you can take home some meaning from these words of mine!

- Aisetra