poems that let you in like a dear friend

[from this twitter thread]

i love those poems that let you in like a dear friend but also like someone who needs to learn something important and challenging, like someone who needs to grow. and grow.

and that's what real friendship is, ultimately: people invested in each other's growth.

and what i also mean is those poems that are so spacious, that open up so much space, because they really seek a listener just as much as a chance to speak.

i love poems where it's evident that someone other than the speaker matters. this could be a reader, but anyone else. i love letter poems, poems addressed to someone. & poems that are (like) prayers, though i don't pray. i'm moved by the effort to say some true thing to another.

within such poems, there is knowledge that one can't fully know if one's words have reached another. and yet there is the belief that it matters to try reaching. there is knowledge of the mystery of words and saying and silence and this reaching toward.

my favorite poems are the ones where i get the deep sense that they need to be read—that the reading is the act(ivation) of the poem. not so much because they need me to see something the way they do. but because they want some company.