Shortly after my arrival in New York in 2022, I set up a small stand with a sign that said, “Poem Store.” I sat by the fountain beside the Metropolitan Museum of Art with a typewriter I had found in my Grandmother’s attic, listening and typing poems for anyone who stopped.

During these brief encounters, people would share vulnerable details of their life - their struggles and joys, their fears, their despair and grief, their hope. I listened to them, to how they spoke their words, how they held their body, to the words they didn’t say, to a gesture they could never hide. In each poem written for another is a moment of life reflected.

In this book, I have compiled some of my favorites.