My baby sister graduates from college this weekend, and I’m not going to be there. I’m sad. I’m proud. I’m also overwhelmed. My schedule is chaotic right now, and as much as I want to teleport myself to hug her and act like the emotionally responsible eldest daughter, I just can’t make it work. And it sucks.
This week has been heavy with a sense of fatigue hard to shake. Everyone I know has been sick, physically, emotionally, or energetically. People are canceling, rescheduling, and rescheduling again. I tried to hold onto structure, but it felt like grabbing water with my hands. I ended up taking multiple naps, like it was part of my job description. My body gave up before my brain did. And when I finally allowed myself to collapse, I felt it: the exhaustion. Sometimes, surviving the week looks like sleep, tea, and lots of soft clothes.
Somewhere between quietly melting into my third or fourth reheat of the same cup of tea, I reminded myself: my poetry book is almost here. It’s happening. A real book. With my name. With poems I wrote in isolation, out of emotional survival, out of understanding the world around me, out of pain, and pure joy. I wrote when I didn’t want to talk to anyone and didn’t want to lie either.
I never started writing poetry because I thought I was good at it. I started writing poetry because I didn’t want anyone to read my diary. It was the safest way to say what I needed to say without handing anyone the full story. It was my therapy before therapy.
I grew up in a world where feelings weren’t explained; they were endured. I learned early how to fold a breakdown into a sentence. Poetry gave me that. In middle school, I used it to escape. I wrote about places I hadn’t seen and futures I didn’t know how to get to. People I met in passing, or stories I thought to be entertaining. In high school, I began writing more. I filled notebook after notebook with poems, and still to this day I’m finding more that I had completely forgotten. By the time I was living on my own in D.C., it was more than just my consistent ritual. I’d scribble verses while waiting on a bus or write full pages during 3 a.m. panic spirals. I have poems written on the backs of receipts, concert flyers, and matchbooks. Most of them I never shared. I didn’t write them for anyone. I wrote them because poetry is my longest friend.
Over time, I got better. Sharper. More honest. Less afraid. And now, years later, I can trace my growth back through these poems like a trail of breadcrumbs. Poetry cracked me open. It softened my anger. It gave my silence a voice. And it taught me how to see the world and myself clearly without flinching.
Now, it’s not just mine anymore. I’m building a poetry collective, a creative container for people like me, who need somewhere safe to say something real. A space for the poems that don’t rhyme but hit anyway. Where poetry can be practical. Where feelings are functional. Where truth has a stage, even if it’s trembling a little.
So here’s one of the poems from the upcoming collection. It still stings a little to share.
« ADD LUXURY EATS ME LAST »
And just for fun (and to show you how far I’ve come), here’s the very first poem I ever wrote. I find it quite adorable.
Okay now. Let’s talk about this couch I just bought.
I bought a couch off Facebook Marketplace because, of course, I did. It was a great deal, perfect color, beautiful shape. The only issue? I live in a very charming, very narrow, very unforgiving cottage-style house. My front door doesn’t open all the way because it hits the stairs at a dramatic two-thirds swing. The side door goes through the kitchen, which is essentially a hallway with cabinets. So that left the back door.
My driveway is basically a vertical slide for cars. We backed the truck up to the top and slowly inched the couch down like it was a baby grand piano. We made it through the back door. Into the dining room. Then we met the hallway.
Tom, who offered to help because he didn’t yet regret it, was standing there silently calculating the square footage of his mistakes. The hallway is the size of the couch. Exactly. I mean that in a literal sense. The couch entered the hallway, but it wasn’t coming out. It just sat there. Blocking everything. We tried angles. We tried swearing. We tried walking away. At one point, I accepted my fate: I guess I have a hallway couch now.
But I don’t give up. Not on couches. Not on metaphors. I spread my optimism onto Tom like butter on slightly stale bread, and we got back to work.
That’s when it hit me. If the couch stands perfectly upright, feet forward like a zombie marching to its death, it just might fit. But only if it was perfectly, and I mean perfectly, straight. One centimeter off, and it wasn’t going.
So we tilted. Lifted. Repositioned. Took a breath. And in one beautiful, excruciating moment, the couch slid through the doorway like it was always meant to be in that living room. And there it sits. Triumphant. Beautiful. Absolutely not a hallway couch.
Anyway, that was my week. I missed a milestone. I grieved a little. I slept a lot. I remembered who I was through poems. And I fought a couch and won.
More next week. Probably from bed again.
xo,
Sheridan Guerrette
WhatSheridanSaid.com
Life Behind the Artist: Wed at 9/8C
