Author’s Note

I grew up with curiosity tucked into my pockets and verses curled beneath my tongue. Emily Dickinson was a whisper in the corners of my childhood, a friend I never met but whose words became a world I could inhabit. This poem is my conversation with her—not as a student or disciple, but as a daughter of her imagination. I step lightly into her quiet rebellion, tracing the wildness in the spaces between her lines, and celebrate the wonder she taught me to carry everywhere.

Invocation

Emily, I call you forth from the hush of your pages—
to twirl with me among dandelion threads,
to sparkle in the dust motes of moonlight,
to teach me the magic hidden in whispered words
and the spellcraft of curiosity.
Come, let us play in the corners of imagination,
where every pause is a secret, every breath a tiny universe.

The Daughter of Dickinson
Poetry by Roo the Poet ☽

I was born with wonder in my pockets,
curiosity curled beneath my tongue—
a girl with soil-stained knees
and verses stitched in dandelion thread.

Emily,
you taught me to whisper like the wind,
to rhyme with ghosts,
to find galaxies
in the hush between heartbeats.

Where others saw silence,
you saw sacredness.
Where others sought heaven,
you built it in the corner of a room
with nothing but paper and breath.

I carry your quiet rebellion—
your needlepoint of metaphors,
your hymns in lowercase,
your refusal to explain
what the soul already understands.

They say I’m soft—
as if softness isn’t a spell.
As if whimsy isn’t a weapon
for those too clever to be caught.

Let them laugh.
Let them call me girl or child or fragile.
They don’t see the wildfire
tucked behind my daydreams,
the spells scribbled in sidewalk chalk,
the dragons I’ve tamed with lullabies.

I don’t need a crown of thorns.
I wear flower crowns and spiderwebs,
and I rule from the quiet places—
behind the bookshelf,
inside the poem,
beneath the bed where dreams go
when they’re too loud for daylight.

You showed me how to write the world slant,
how to speak with lightning behind my teeth.
I am your echo in soft rebellion,
your candlelit cathedral of small, sacred things.

So call me daughter,
call me myth in the making—
but do not mistake my hush for absence.
I am here.
Wide-eyed.
Wand in hand.
Heart open like a story yet to be told.

Benediction

May the softest words bloom like wildflowers in your heart.
May curiosity be your compass and wonder your crown.
May you find galaxies in small corners,
and speak with lightning behind your teeth.
Go forth with wand in hand,
ink on your fingertips,
and a heart open to all the stories yet to be told.
May you be brave, be small, be loud, be soft—
and may the quiet magic of Emily’s whispers
always walk beside you.

The Poetic Lineage

The Daughter of Plath | Rowan Evans
In The Daughter of Plath, Rowan Evans writes as the heir to a ghost—cradling grief not her own, baptized in bell jars, and building a cathedral from ash. This is a confession, a prayer, and a refusal to let the ache fall silent.