In the Making: Building My First Poetry Collection

As my writing career has evolved, I’ve become more intentional about expanding my creative range. Like an artist working in new mediums, I’m drawn to the spaces that both challenge and sustain me. Poetry has become one of them. It can be dramatic, but it can also be restrained, abstract, or deeply embodied.

Lately, I’ve been reading collections by writers I admire, studying the ways reflection and vulnerability shape their work. The pieces that linger most are often the quietest. Poetry invites a writer to reveal themselves — to offer a glimpse into their interior world for just a moment. It feels closest to an oil painting: layered, textured, and built slowly over time.

What follows is a poem about what it feels like to build my own collection.

In the Making

Writing a collection of poetry is

Driving with the windows down

While music blares

Realizing you are almost home

And the song is over

Disheveled hair

in the corner of the room.

Writing a collection of poetry is

the sounds of soft music

loud snores

and the ticking of a clock.

constantly deleting and rewriting

scrapping

and tearing away pages.

A mosaic

of kitchen floors

lunch breaks

and toddler tantrums—

 feeling the warmth hitting your cheeks

coming in from the cold

wind kissed and bare.

-Destany