The Room Moved On

When I first started writing, I just wanted people to laugh. I remember sitting at my desk when I was twelve years old, scribbling the weirdest plots I could think of—robot bananas, cursed vending machines, a detective who could only solve crimes by rapping. I liked it when people read my stuff and laughed, even if it was just one person. Humor felt like the center of my writing, and I believed it always would be.

But eventually, I realized I was hiding behind it.

It’s not that I don’t still love writing funny pieces. But over time, I started noticing that the stories that stuck with me weren’t the ones that got laughs. They were the ones that hurt. The ones where I said something I didn’t even know I needed to say until I saw it in front of me. I realized that just as writing was able to make people laugh, it was also able to make them feel deeper, more profound emotions. Emotions that they bury, and don’t let show, but that are part of them nonetheless, whether they like it or not.

That shift happened when I wrote The In-Between. It’s a quiet piece, almost nothing happens in it. A person wakes up, sits in the dark, and tries not to reach for someone they’ve lost. But that was one of the first times I let myself write something real. Maybe not polished. But it was honest. And that was when I knew I’d crossed into something deeper.

After that, my writing changed. I started chasing deep emotions– that shiver you get when you read a piece that resonates with you– instead of laughs. Still experimenting—always experimenting—but now my work feels like it's in conversation with my past. My characters started sounding like people I’ve known, or people I used to be. I wrote a poem called Erosion, about a limestone block that once helped build the pyramids, now crumbling on a classroom board. It was about legacy and identity and feeling like you come from greatness but were never built to last. At first, I didn’t realize I was writing about myself. But when I read it back, I recognized every line.

There’s a specific memory that shows up in my writing all the time, even when I don’t mean it to. It was in 6th grade. I was doing a presentation, and I completely blanked. I forgot my whole speech. The students was just staring at me, waiting. I opened my mouth and nothing came out. And eventually they just skipped my slide. That moment—the quiet panic, the pressure to perform, the embarrassment of smallness—shows up again and again in my characters. It doesn’t seem huge looking back on it now, but that defeat meant the world to me. I realize now that I often write people who are trying to be seen, but feel like they’re always fading. Whether it’s a crumbling stone, a silent morning, or a kid who can’t find the words, that’s what ties so many of my pieces together. In a way, I want to write the kind of stories I needed back then.

Writing has helped me process those moments—not to fix them, but to understand them. Sometimes I write poems that don’t make sense at first, but the meaning later. It’s like I’m decoding parts of myself without realizing it. The cool thing is that this makes every piece in my portfolio feel like a time capsule. I can go back and read something I wrote months ago and instantly remember what I was going through, what I was afraid of, or what I was trying to prove.

One of the biggest things I’ve learned is that writing doesn’t have to scream to be heard, because all that matters from your writing is that it has to be real. That’s why I now take more risks with tone and form. I’ve tried everything—poetic free verse, compressed flash, lyrical essays— some of it’s turned out great, and other pieces, not so much. But through all of it, I’ve learned to trust my instincts. 

So what’s unique about my writing? Maybe it’s that it’s always trying to get to the bottom of something. Even the funny ones have pain in them. Even the sad ones have hope in them. I don’t like endings that tie things up neatly, because I don’t think that’s how life works. I like it when writing leaves something unsettled. That’s why I write now. Not just for laughs. Not even for the silence. I write to leave something behind, something that resonates with those who need it the most.