Things I Wrote When You Weren’t Paying Attention is a collection of poetry I began writing in 2016, often while in the company of men who liked my presence more than my depth. The words in these poems weave flits of fantasy, fragments of attention, moments of longing, and the quiet reckonings of a woman refusing to be unseen. They live in the spaces between conversation and observation, desire and reflection, capturing what I noticed, what I felt, and what I held when no one else was watching.

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if you ask a woman
to tame her heart
and she complies

run

because the wildness
is the point

because love
should feel like pulse

not obedience
not permission

if she makes herself smaller
to fit your hands

what you’re holding
is not devotion

it’s disappearance