poetry found me
in the middle of a lonely night
not as a storm breaking
but as a breath
I didn’t know I was holding

it slipped between the noise
named things I had only felt
as shadows pressing
against my ribs

before it
I lived in fragments
untranslated days
nights that spoke in static

then came the lines
breaking me open
without breaking me
teaching my tongue
the shape of truth

now I walk differently
listening for the music
in ordinary air
carrying whole worlds
in the small space of a sentence

poetry did not change the world
but
it changed the way I belong to it