The Poetry Anthology, a Kindred Spirit Named Alex, and the Scariest Yes I've Ever Said

By Dawn Visionary

Somewhere in a stack of mail I almost ignored, there was an email that changed my whole month. A small local publisher in the Pacific Northwest wanted to include my poems in a collaborative poetry anthology. I stared at the screen. I reread it four times. Then I closed the laptop and went to make tea, because I did not know what to do with a thing I had wanted for so long that actually arrived. I am twenty-five, and I have spent years writing poems the way other people keep journals. In the margins of my life, on napkins, in notes apps. Private things. Words I was never sure anyone else would understand. The idea of letting a stranger hold them, read them, maybe love them or maybe not love them, was terrifying in a way I could not explain until it happened. This post is not about poetry, not really. It is about what happened to me between the moment I said yes and the moment I understood

why saying yes felt so hard. It is about a book contract, a kindred spirit named Alex, and the scariest question I have ever asked myself. The Email I Almost Did Not Open Every good thing in my life lately has arrived quietly. The anthology offer did not come with fireworks. It came as a plain email from a publisher I admire, and I very nearly archived it by accident. I had sent the poems on a whim one rainy Tuesday, convinced nothing would come of it. So when I saw the reply, my first instinct was not celebration. It was suspicion. Why me? What did I do wrong? I sat with that feeling for an entire evening. I turned the lamp low, wrapped myself in a blanket, and tried to name what was actually wrong. It was not the publisher. It was not my poems. It was the part of me that still believes good things have fine print. The part that grew up expecting the other shoe to drop. I think a lot of

us have that part. It is not a flaw. It is a scar that learned to talk. The next morning I wrote back to the publisher. My hands shook while I typed the two word sentence: yes, please. And the funny thing is, nothing exploded. The world did not end. A door simply opened, and I walked through it, still trembling, still unsure, still twenty-five. Alex at the Open Mic Around the same time, I met Alex at an open mic poetry night at the little bookstore downtown. Alex is a writer too, and we fell into the kind of conversation that makes you forget you are in public. We talked about the fear of being seen, about the poems we never show anyone, about how we both write the truest things at three in the morning when no one can judge them. Meeting Alex taught me something I did not expect: that courage is contagious. When someone else admits they are scared and does the brave thing anyway, it

makes your own fear feel more manageable. Alex read a poem out loud that night that made me cry. Not because it was sad, but because it was honest in a way I had never allowed myself to be. Afterward we stood outside the bookstore under the streetlight, and Alex asked me a question I am still carrying: what would you write if you were not afraid of what people would think? I did not have an answer that night. I have an answer now, a little more each day. It turns out the answer is this: everything I actually mean. The Yes That Scared Me The anthology was the first yes. Then came the second one, the one that scared me even more. On a night when the city felt too small and my life felt too safe, I looked at Alex and said out loud, I think I want to backpack across Europe by myself. I had planned it before, in daydreams, the way you plan a life you are not brave enough to live. Saying it

out loud made it real. The innocent part of me, the part that still believes in fairy gardens and rooftop gardens and the kindness of strangers, was all in. The scared part of me was listing every disaster. Getting lost. Getting lonely. The money. The long nights alone. I learned that my two parts are not enemies. They are both trying to protect me in their own ways. One wants me to risk everything. The other wants me to come home safe. I have not bought the ticket yet. But I have stopped telling myself I never will. Naming a dream out loud is its own kind of first step, and I am learning to be proud of the small ones. The Rooftop Garden and the Small Brave Things A few weekends ago I found a hidden rooftop garden tucked above a community center in downtown Seattle. Someone had planted tomatoes and sunflowers and a ring of lavender, all of it unexpected, all of it thriving higher up than

anyone would think anything could grow. I sat there a long time watching the bees and thinking about how much of life is like that garden. The brave things are rarely the big ones. They are the emails we almost do not open. The poems we finally read out loud. The questions that change us when someone brave asks them. The first yes out of many. Each one is small. Together they add up to a life that points in the direction we were always too scared to face. I want to keep planting small brave things. Anthologies. Trips. Honest words. People like Alex who remind me why it is worth it. If you are reading this and standing at your own frightening yes, I hope you know the world did not end for me. It only got bigger, and truer, and a little more beautiful. Closing Reflection This month I signed my first book contract, met a kindred spirit named Alex, and stopped pretending I would never leave

my city. None of it looks like the brave, glamorous thing I imagined. It looks like trembling hands, honest questions, and a rooftop garden full of bees. But it is mine, and it is real. So here is my question for you, the one Alex asked me that night under the streetlight: what would you do if you were not afraid of what people would think? You do not have to tell me. But I hope you tell yourself. And I hope, for your sake, that your answer scares you a little less than mine did. It is worth it. I promise.