You Could Make This Place Beautiful

by Maggie Smith

We are all nesting dolls, carrying the earlier iterations of ourselves inside. We carry the past inside us. We take ourselves—all of our selves—wherever we go.

“Wish for more pain,” a friend’s therapist advised, if you want to change. If you’re in enough pain, you won’t be able to continue living the way you’ve been living; you’ll have to do something differently. But be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it—and then what? Then the pain is yours. The pain is yours and it will change you.

So many of my poems were made possible only because I took the time to look at my surroundings, listen to the wind and the birds, touch leaves to know their textures, breathe deeply to describe what the autumn air smelled like. Being sensitive, attuned, observant—these things don’t just improve your writing, they improve your life.