and then i got an email

what its like when you shush the doubt

Photo by George Kourounis on Unsplash

I’m back in upstate New York for a visit.

It’s a very ordinary Tuesday - it’s April 1st, the sun has decided to come out after a bit of snow kissed the grass this morning and the wind is biting.

I was sitting at my laptop working when I got an email from a press I had submitted poetry to during an open contest that ended recently.

Full disclosure - I was 100% expecting it to be yet another “we loved it but it didn’t move on” email. The rejections you receive as a writer are infinite - they settle into your soul and stay for too long.

But then I opened the email - literally about 15 minutes ago - and it said I was a semi-finalist.

Sorry, say what?

I had submitted ‘the bodies i loved in secret,’ a poem I feared writing for a long time - writing it meant I had to confront my years of internalized homophobia, the time I wasted people pleasing at my own detriment, and the time I spent being a person that I am just…not.

I have no idea what the rest of the contest holds, but it does solidify one this for me - this year, I am writing my chapbook. I already told

Levi Macallister

on my last coaching call that we are doing it, and today I am telling you that I am doing it.

In 2025, I’m writing a chapbook. It doesn’t matter if one person reads it or 100. The doubt is gone.

I’m just going to write from now on. The rest will happen as it should.

[In the meantime, please love and support Lefty Blondie Press. By supporting them, you are supporting the poetry of woman-identifying and non-binary writers, like me.]