This month’s poem is “The Hidden Heart of Words” by Evana Wakati. Call 207-828-5607 to hear Evana’s poem, read by the author.
The Hidden Heart of Words
Evana Wakati
A voice that flows straight from the soul,
raw with every shade of feeling,
tangled up in both beauty and pain.
Writing is like healing without stitches,
a place to pour out what’s inside
without scrubbing it so clean
that all the color fades.
Words give me company when the world feels hollow,
each letter helping me connect
with the quiet parts of myself
that still aches to be known.
A man once told me,
“The only way out is through.”
It’s a path that isn’t smooth,
where sometimes the tears flow,
softening the burden in my chest.
I’ve learned not to polish every line into something flawless.
There’s beauty in imperfection,
in words that ache and stumble,
in sentences that feel as rough as real life.
Books kept me alive through lonely nights;
they gave me a sense of beauty when everything felt empty.
I know now that beauty starts within,
in the soft places where vulnerability lives.
Everyone feels things differently
if it hurts, it hurts.
The pain isn’t just the situation;
It’s the principle that cuts deeper.
So I write to understand,
to lay down my heart and soul on paper
and let it breathe.
In words, I find beauty,
a power that both heals and reveals.
These words, these fragments of my hidden heart,
are where I go when I need to remember
what it means to be free.
Evana Wakati is a 17-year-old junior at Portland High School. Writing and reading are her heart’s language — where emotions bloom freely. In her poem, The Hidden Heart of Words, every word carries a piece of her soul, expressing the beauty she feels within.
Evana is part of The Telling Room’s Young Writers & Leaders program, an afterschool literary arts education program exclusively for high school students with international and multicultural backgrounds. She composed this poem as a part of the program and performed it at Mayo Street Arts in December 2024.
The SPACE Poetry Hotline is a screenless exhibition available to anyone with access to a phone. The Poetry Hotline offers audiences a direct line to Maine-based and national poets and their visions for the future, and another medium to connect and inspire audiences with heartache, love, humor, rage, and regeneration.