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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a woman
is the cosmos

expanding,
collapsing,
birthing light within pressure

she invokes a deep knowing
without ever fully unveiling her secrets

you may map her laughter,
memorize the curve of her shoulder,
learn the rhythm of her sigh

and still
there will be galaxies
you have not touched

to love her
is not to conquer her

it is to orbit

to accept
a mystery
you cannot solve

only behold