898
writing became the place she returned to whenever the world became too loud.
there is a version of this poem that someone could read as a celebration of productivity. 898 poems. an impressive number. the kind of milestone that invites comparison, applause, or curiosity. but that reading misses what is happening beneath the surface.
this poem is not counting poems. it is counting survivals.
each piece represents a moment when the poet chose language instead of silence. when grief, loneliness, joy, rage, love, faith, or uncertainty became something she could hold outside herself instead of carrying alone. the page became less of a destination than a place to set down a burden, if only for a while.
the recurring question of whether the number matters reveals something deeper. she is aware of the literary world, of celebrated names and shelves filled with books destined to outlive their authors. but she quietly refuses to measure herself against them. the poems were never written to earn a place beside anyone else. they were written because there were days when not writing would have meant losing a part of herself.
that is what makes the final lines so powerful. “she’s not trying to be remembered. she’s trying to stay alive.” it is both literal and symbolic. writing becomes an act of preservation, not of reputation. every poem captures a version of herself that might otherwise have vanished beneath depression, trauma, time, or the ordinary erosion of memory.
the poet within her is not searching for perfection. she is searching for truth. some days that truth arrives polished and beautiful. other days it arrives bleeding, unfinished, desperate for air. both belong on the page. both deserve to exist.
898 poems do not prove that she is a great writer.
they prove that she kept choosing to return to herself.
perhaps that is what poetry has always been for her. not a performance for strangers, but a conversation with the woman she hopes will still be here tomorrow. every poem says the same quiet thing in a different voice.
i survived this day.
and then the next one.
and the next.
She’s penned 898 poems. Not just words, not just ink— but scars, breaths, screams, and the soft whispers of her solitude. She wonders, sometimes, where this number places her on the spectrum of poets she’s read, those towering voices, their names etched in marble or forgotten ash. But numbers don’t matter, not when her words aren’t meant for shelves but for survival. Every poem was a climb, a gasp for air, a fist raised against the weight of this brutal, beautiful world. 898 times, she reached into the dark, pulled out her heart, and let it bleed onto the page. Does it make her a great poet? Does it matter? She’s not writing for laurels or lists she’s writing because she has to, because there’s fire in her veins and storms in her chest that demand release. They told her to speak softer. They told her to stay small. They told her "no" and heard "maybe." But 898 times, she took up space in the only way they couldn’t silence with her words. She’s not trying to be remembered. She’s trying to stay alive. And maybe that’s what makes her more human than poet— the weight of every letter, every line, scratched out not for the world, but for herself. She is her own list, her own measure, her own history. 898 poems and she is still writing.