your heart and the sea

intro

A while ago I had a poetry book entitled Ribs on my main account astrologay . However, I took it down because my poems are incredibly personal to me, and I've kind of got a large platform on my main account. I didn't like knowing that so many people were looking at my poetry. It made me feel kind of exposed and self-conscious. Like I had to water myself down, edit what I was trying to say.

And that's not what poetry is about. In poetry, like in all art forms, it should be a safe space where you can freely express yourself.

I don't believe that poetry should be a secret. I like sharing my poems with other people, I just didn't like how many silent eyes were watching me on my main. Ribs had, what, three-thousand-something reads and a couple hundred votes? And I would hardly get a comment or two per poem, sometimes even less. It made me really nervous, because so many people were reading it, but so few people had anything to say. I felt like a mannequin in a window display.

I remember, after I posted one poem in particular, Thanatos, which is one of the most personal poems I've ever written, sitting there, staring at my phone screen, waiting for the notifications to start. Waiting for validation. Needing validation. Because it was so personal to me, and I was so scared it was gonna get the wrong reaction, that people were gonna think it was too dark or un-relatable. Or, even worse, that they were gonna completely misinterpret it all together and not realize what it was actually about: death. I was so worried that there was gonna be people who'd never experienced loss before, and that they were gonna think it was some elaborate metaphor for a break-up or something that it wasn't. But why did I care so much about what they thought about the poem? It was my poem, not their's. My emotions, not their's. Only I could validate what I was feeling. And writing is my validation, but I was letting my Constant Need for Everyone to Like Me get in the way of that.

I was also always vying to get more reads, votes, and comments, and it made me feel SO inauthentic. I cared more about what people thought about my poetry than if what it was saying was true.

I made the decision to move my poetry over here because it's such a smaller audience. Most of my followers are just my friends, lmao. And I feel like that works a lot better for something as personal and intimate as poetry.

Still, there were some poems I really liked in Ribs. I didn't want to scrap them when I scrapped the book. So I'm moving them all over here, and if any of you read Ribs, you might see some familiar faces. But don't worry—most of the poems in here are 100% brand new, never-before-been-published works.

This book is gonna be legit, y'all. It's gonna get gritty, and raw, and real. The unedited, uncensored, completely authentic, I-don't-give-a-fuck-anymore version of Ribs.

Because I don't give no fucks no more, and neither should you.

To a fuckless future.