All Roads Lead

An Introduction to my book

All Roads Lead : A Book of Poetry Spanning A Decade of Love and Loneliness is a book I have been writing since I was seventeen years old, or rather that was the first dated poem I could find in my assorted papers and journals that still felt like me. It’s funny to look back on things I wrote so long ago. Some I can remember so potently, as if I wrote and experienced them yesterday. Some that are more recent, I can still barely believe are my life. All of the poems are dated, however they do not come in chronological order. I am not that straightforward, but the bones are there.

I decided to put a cap on this collection of writing now, in the year 2024, a decade from when it starts. A decade seems to be a kind of monumental number, and in many ways it feels fitting to end that chapter and start anew, as I am currently facing change in my life in every way possible. Change is something I feel quite familiar with now. It is always there waiting for me.

These poems are as titled, tales that start from the very beginning of my adulthood, that explore all of the roads I have taken. For better or for worse, they have all led somewhere, and that somewhere is the whole of my life. It travels from a place of childlike dreams, stopping at each growing pain, and arriving time after time at the ever present duality of intense loneliness and happiness that can live inside of us and our relationships.

I have this strong reputation of being a very shy, quiet and introverted woman. And well, I’ll give it to you, this is more than half right. I’ve said more times than I can count that I don’t speak unless spoken to. In public, I’m an observer, I’m a listener. In private, I still keep my pain bottled deep inside, a bad habit, yes, and save it to be put to use creatively. Insert here The Uses of Sorrow by Mary Oliver. Something along those lines. Yet, in private, there is also a lighter side to me, a freedom, a silliness, a lover. Not many people get to see that side of me. It’s been a reserved few, meaning it can only emerge once I am comfortable around you, and I would like to feel comfortable to be my whole self a bit more these days. So, do we feel closer yet?

Being vulnerable is one of the hardest things in this world for me to do. But it’s also the strongest thing that anyone can do. So here goes. This is the first introductory “poem” to my book. My hope is to release a selected few every week, and just see how it feels to share. And who knows, maybe I’ll think of some other things to say along the way.

Introduction -

I don’t know why I wrote this book. I wrote it because I had to. I know what you are thinking, but this isn’t a cry for help. You must know me, though, and I have cried that sound many times. I can remember kneeling somewhere hidden outside as a young girl. I can remember sobbing on the floor of the empty moonlit apartment, windows on every side, watching for headlights from the freeway or the driveway. Waiting for something or someone to come save me from myself. This is not a victory march. There is nothing I have to gain. It’s not a beginning, and not an end. It is not a pat on the back or a ripe reflection reached from the trials of my years. These are what, with the passing of time, we call memories, though once they were moments. But not the ones you would think. There is no poem written the day my daughter was born, but rather notes I scribbled months before, when I didn’t know if I could survive the events and circumstances that had become my life. There is no poem for my first date, but rather poems gathered from the late night conversations from a living room at eighteen years old that only two people could ever remember. And I knew I’d be the only one that would.

There is a lot of loneliness contained here. There is a lot of love. Buckets and pockets and arms full of love. There is the familiar hollowness in the middle of the night, when I move closer to my sleeping daughter and rub my nose on hers, and remember…. something vague. I would never give all of my memories away. There is some joy, but mostly heartbreak. Heartbreak both fed to me in heaping spoonfuls by others and the worst kind, that which I created for myself. These are the moments that have touched me, from the lips and the hands of everyone I have loved. I have always been writing as I go along, processing the moment in the only way I know how. My reason is still unclear, but I can only say that I fear that if I hadn’t nodded and smiled, holding hidden some secret sorrow that I could never tell you, if i hadn’t stared out quiet windows and answered them back with my own form of silence, if I hadn’t lain with my face to the wall rewriting the day in my mind, well I don’t know where those moments might have gone. I have this fear that they would disappear. Like the photographer, ever on the move, ever anxiously grasping to capture the moment before it is gone. It can never be recreated, try as you might. I must feel them and steal them from the air between us. Because I have to remember. Do you ever feel that way?

I hope that you find pieces of yourself in these poems, figuratively. That is the great achievement of art and writing specifically. However vague or detailed a song, a poem, a story may be, we always relate it to ourselves, and in that inherent selfishness lies the great beauty of empathy, understanding, and most importantly, connection. If you find yourself in these poems literally, you are probably wrong, though you may be right. However, do not fret. It is not me saying hello or I miss you or how could you. It is only me placing my hand on your shoulder and looking you straight in the eye before leaning in to give you one last whisper in your ear, “Thank you for the times we have shared, for both the beauty and the deep, deep sorrow that has made my life worth writing about at all.”

-Film Photographs by Maxine Woodring-