You are beautiful

I wanted to kick off Poetry month 2025 with a short message about the transformative power of poetry. I'd also like to share a poem that I hope will resonate with you.

When I was a young teen, like many kids, I felt lost, confused, alone, and misunderstood. I was fortunate to have people around me who guided me toward self-expression in the arts. Poetry became one of the most powerful expressive forces in my life and though I didn't understand it at the time, when I reflect on my teenage years, I see that writing was a way for me to collect these feelings and sublimate them, so they could live in a place outside my heart. To transform the feeling by interacting with a creative, rather than a destructive, force.

Last September, I did a poetry reading in Highland Park at the Wayfarer Theatre. During the open mic portion of the event, a young woman gave a tearful reading of a poem she'd written about getting bullied at school. Her reading inspired the following poem, and though I have no way of contacting her, I hope she is still writing, transforming sadness into the sublime.

You are Beautiful

for Mallory

I see two positive messages on my way to work each day.

The first is a notice board on a patch of grass outside a Lutheran church.

It tells me, I am loved.

The second of the two is printed in bold on the art museum.

It tells me, I am beautiful in both English and Spanish.

The Spanish more profoundly states,

"tu eres belleza" which tells me I am beauty.

An embodied quality.

My adult mind consumes, metabolizes, internalizes these messages.

They remind me of how much I have to be grateful for.

I stopped to take a picture of these messages so that I too

could share a random "you are beautiful" with a friend

in the same spirit these messages were shared with me.

As I stepped back to get the whole sentence in the frame,

a teenager in a passing car hung out of his window and shouted,

"you're ugly" in my direction.

He didn't take anything from my adult self.

He didn't have the power to hurt my adult feelings.

But it reminded me of a girl I once was and that there are those

who would choose cruelty over indifference over good.

Some would argue these signs are worthless platitudes,

and to them I would cite Mallory, who wrote a heartfelt poem

about suffering at the hands of a bully and who couldn't finish

reading it because the sadness behind the words overtook her.

I have no way of sending this message to her

and I don't think she lives anywhere near this loving street

where I walk past these two messages intended to counteract

the vitriol that has become so commonplace among us.

But I want to share this message

from the short stretch of Cottage Hill Avenue

Walk with me, no matter what they say.

"You are beautiful"

"tu eres belleza" and

"you are loved."

#poetrymonth #April2025