Ashley Monae

I used to think poems had rules.

Thought every line had to rhyme,
every ending had to kiss the next sentence perfectly.
Like pain only counted
if it sounded pretty enough to repeat.

So I would sit there,
searching for synonyms,
forcing words together that didn’t even belong to me
just so the poem sounded complete.

I cared more about matching the line
than telling the truth.

And honestly…
I got tired.

Tired of dressing emotions up
like they weren’t already enough on their own.

Because life wasn’t rhyming.
Heartbreak didn’t rhyme.
Motherhood didn’t rhyme.
Loving people harder than they loved me back
definitely didn’t rhyme.

So one day I stopped trying to make the words dance
and just let them bleed.

I started writing exactly how it felt.
Messy.
Heavy.
Confusing.
Beautiful.
Honest.

And that’s when I realized
poems were never supposed to sound perfect.

They were supposed to make somebody feel seen.

To sit in somebody’s chest.
To sound like the thoughts they couldn’t explain themselves.

I learned a poem doesn’t need to rhyme
when the truth already hits hard enough.

Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do
is stop searching for prettier words
and finally say the real one.