Writing Toward Myself

By Noel Galon de Leon

This past May, I gave myself a challenge. I wanted to write one poem every single day. No shortcuts, no skipping, no convenient excuses. At first, it seemed like a simple commitment, but I quickly realized it would ask something deeper of me. I was on a semi-break from my work as a teacher, and for once, there was a bit of mental space that felt rare and generous. That kind of stillness, that kind of pause, doesn’t come around often. So I asked myself what I wanted to do with it, and the answer was clear to me: I wanted to write.

Not just casually. Not just when inspiration struck. I wanted to write consistently and intentionally. Poetry had always been close to my heart, but I often found myself caught between the desire to create and the noise of my daily responsibilities. So this time, I made the decision to show up for the page every day. I didn’t wait for the perfect idea or the perfect words. I just wrote, honestly and regularly, letting each day’s thoughts and emotions find shape in verse.

At first, I treated it like a discipline. A commitment to prove to myself that I could follow through. But somewhere around the second week, something shifted. The act of writing stopped feeling like a task I had to complete and began to feel like a space I could retreat to. It became something sacred. It became the one place where I could hear myself think, where I could sit with my thoughts and feelings without judgment or interruption. More than anything, it felt like I was slowly uncovering parts of myself that I hadn’t fully seen or acknowledged before.

By the end of the month, I had a small collection of poems, each one a snapshot of who I was on a particular day. Some of them felt raw and immediate. Others felt more deliberate and crafted. But all of them felt honest. And when I read them back, I began to notice patterns, recurring questions, certain obsessions I returned to without meaning to. I also saw my blind spots, the places where I held back or played it safe. But instead of feeling discouraged, I felt encouraged. I saw growth. I saw the beginnings of a voice becoming clearer, bolder, more trusting of itself.

This process made me realize that writing is not just about producing work. It is a form of reflection, a way of understanding how I move through the world. And more importantly, it is a form of conversation with the self. There were days I wrote out of joy. There were days I wrote through loneliness or confusion. And there were days I didn’t know what I was writing toward, only that I had to keep going. But through it all, the page stayed open. It kept meeting me wherever I was.

Now that it’s June, and I’ve had a bit of time to reflect, I find myself feeling a quiet but deep pride. I am proud not only of the poems I’ve written but of the rhythm I’ve created for myself. It feels like I’ve planted something, and even if I don’t know exactly what kind of tree it will become, I know it has roots now. I’m in the process of compiling the poems, and I’m thinking of putting together a chapbook. It’s not something extravagant. It’s something personal, something to hold this moment in time and mark this season of growth.

Moving forward, I want to keep writing, but with even more focus. In particular, I want to explore my experiences as a queer writer and dive deeper into the realities of the LGBTQIA+ community I belong to. I’ve noticed how few books exist in our country that are written from the perspective of queer and trans Filipinos. There are gaps in our literature, absences that I believe we need to address. I don’t claim to speak for everyone, but I do feel a responsibility to add to the conversation, to help shape a literary space that reflects more of who we are.

Lately, I’ve been especially drawn to the stories of transgender Filipinos, particularly those who have left the country to work abroad. I’ve read news articles, online narratives, and social media posts that hint at their struggles and triumphs. And what strikes me most is the emotional complexity of their journeys — the courage it takes to live fully in one’s truth while navigating systems and cultures that often refuse to understand. These are stories that deserve to be written with care, with nuance, and with deep empathy. I don’t want to write about them from a distance. I want to write in solidarity, as someone who understands, at least in part, what it means to live in a body and identity that the world often tries to define for you.

Poetry gives me a way to approach these stories without simplifying them. It allows me to enter spaces of ambiguity and emotion, to ask questions instead of impose answers. And in doing so, I believe poetry becomes more than art. It becomes a form of witness, of resistance, of love.

May was just one month. But it taught me what becomes possible when I create space for myself to write, when I show up honestly, and when I use language not only to describe the world but to change how I see and move within it. I don’t know where this path will take me exactly, but I know I’ve started walking it — one poem, one truth, one line at a time.

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Noel Galon de Leon is a writer and educator at University of the Philippines Visayas, where he teaches in both the Division of Professional Education and U.P. High School in Iloilo. He serves as an Executive Council Member of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts-National Committee on Literary Arts.