—to acknowledge the ordinary.

The most mundane act can carry heavy poetry.

(—buttoning shirt sleeves before a smudged mirror, balancing a checkbook at nightfall, wiping down a damp countertop with a bluegray rag—)

The art of the commonplace translates to expressions of verse, to the beginnings of a larger idea. What makes writing stronger is the confirmation of humanity that exists in the average individual, to display the familiar, to acknowledge the ordinary.

(—paring back the thumbnail of a child’s left hand, sweeping dust and crumbs from a week’s worth of living—)

In these cases, when a reader recognizes an event as a form of reality, the moment becomes a truth. The truth becomes a poem—all before the turning of the page, before the book returns to the top shelf.