Journal Entry The Way Poetry Makes Me Feel I don’t think I’ve ever truly expressed how deeply I love poetry. Not just the written words themselves, but the feeling behind them the breath, the pauses, the emotion when a poet reads their own work out loud. There’s something sacred about hearing a piece performed the way it was meant to be felt. When every word lands like it’s meant for you, and yet not just for you. When the writer's voice becomes your own inner monologue. Their story, their ache, their joy it seeps into you until you’re experiencing the poem just as they did... but also entirely as _you_. It’s wild to me how someone can write in a language my soul understands so perfectly. How their verses echo something I never said out loud but always felt. Every time I return to a poem like that, it’s like stepping into a memory I never lived but still know by heart. And no matter how often I hear it or read it, it always makes me feel everything _all over again_.