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Jun 19, 2022Liked by Devin Kelly

Devin, your reflections have become essential to my sense of hope. I can also say I am astonished by the beautiful collaboration between your understanding of craft and the portals that intelligence has for feeling. Rare. So rare. And why hope? Because you read, reflect, and send forth your words each week with courage and generosity. Because people like you are in the world. I thank you.

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I keep coming back to this poem and reflection, if that is what you wish to call it, and despite the fact that I have started this comment what feels like a hundred times I finally think I know what I want to say. Whether other people actually read a comment on a post from more than a year ago or not, I would first like to preference that I am an 17 year old Australian student in my final year of high school who does Extension English 2 (which is the most English a student can do, so practically English on steroids) and then entire course is about one piece of writing, which after 40 weeks of learning goes off to be marked by a board of English teachers I've never met in my life. I say this because after completing my tenth or so draft I came across this poem and thought about how it says what I wish to say in twenty-eight lines, that I feel I cannot get out in 6000 words. I keep coming back because of the almost serious, playfulness that Belli communicates her thoughts - and that's what it feels like, simple thoughts. For me she highlights the 'shadows' of the past, and the 'suns happiness' of the present with the affirmation of a undefined future, that while the suns present reflects the shadows of the past onto buildings that haunt - the future is malleable and unshaped and waiting for you to come and shape it. That it does not hold definite colours, instead just the hues.

Anyways, this was a lot longer than I thought it would be, oh well, thank you for sharing a poem I probably would never have found otherwise, M.

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