Best Poems Written by Amanda Chavez

An Epiphany Dawns

She moves through the world in watercolors; bright, translucent, and skipping across the surface of things.
People see the "whimsical" girl, the one who finds magic in the mundane and speaks in the language of curiosity.
They gravitate toward that light because it’s easy to bask in.
But she keeps the doors to her inner galleries locked, because she’s convinced that if they saw the oil paintings beneath… the ones rendered in thick, heavy strokes of midnight blue and leaden grey: the one’s that showcase the darkness she’s still fighting to overcome- they would realize they’ve walked into a museum they aren't really interested in.
She tells herself she is better off in her own company, a solitary curator of her own complexity.
She… I fear that a witness would only want the spark and not the furnace.
My experiences convinced me long ago that my depth is a burden… My heaviness- a truth that eventually would extinguish the very light people claim to love.
But now, I am learning to accept that I am not two separate, warring versions of myself, but a single, very real and vivid landscape.
The whimsy isn't a mask, and the heaviness isn't a secret; they are the poles that keep my world spinning. And in that spinning there is whimsy, longing, waiting.
She… I. I have been waiting for those who don’t just tolerate the contrast, but understand that you cannot have the moon without the vast, dark sky that holds it.
And the brighter the technicolor projection, the deeper the darkness must be to hold the image.

Copyright © Amanda Chavez | Year Posted 2026