Becoming Radha
I started by reading The Bulwark, only occasionally. Then there was The Starfire Codes, The Rewind and Thinking Man.
It took me months to screw up enough courage to place a poem in Radha’s Substack.
Then there was being a woman with a trans history and politics, fighting divorce, ex becoming the lover of someone I’d imagined as my oldest friend.
I still work as a clinical social worker but not enough patients to support a meager SSA check. And now there’s Doggie trying to end my $924/month and my alimony ends in two years. It’s $1000/month.
I also got an actual Great Pyrenees in the divorce. She’s become my best friend. She eats a lot, as dogs do. But, we (ex & i) adopted her through a rescue that brought her to NJ from AL. She is beautiful and loving and gentle. She chose me as her human that first day in 2018 & has kept choosing me every day sense.
I mostly write comments on other’s platforms. I feel empty of poems for the past year. I’ve also become empty of friends. I’ve never put a price on what I do right on this platform. The Chase after money has never been my interest. Now I mostly do without. There have been five or six such times in my life.
Perhaps I’ll stop here. But, later on, perhaps, I’ll try to speak more words into my iPhone and make another entry on Radha’s Substack. I hope someone reads this.
Thanks Radha! We see you! Keep writing. We need you. We are the poem. Never alone here 🙏❤️
I see and feel you! Glad you’re here on Substack! Reading and commenting on others work is so valuable. Especially to those of us who are human writers, not relying on AI and putting our real selves out there. I think the poetry will come back. It’s never really gone, just lower probability given everything else that’s being evoked under your current conditions. You could even post “bad” poems (not that I think there’s such a thing). People here are super supportive, regardless, and they’ll never tell you otherwise.