Hi readers, writers, and shark fans! You know that feeling when you finish reading a book… and a few weeks later, it comes back to you, and you can’t stop thinking about it unless you revisit it? Well, that’s how we’re currently feeling about Sophie Diener’s debut poetry collection, Someone Somewhere Maybe.

You can read our review of Someone Somewhere Maybe and see our exclusive interview with Sophie Diener here.

Whether it’s emotional, humorous, dark, beautiful, or confronting, poetry should make you feel something. Sophie Diener’s work absolutely does—and we’re ready to feel all of those emotions again. We hope you’re ready to go along for the ride with us.

FIVE POEMS BY SOPHIE DIENER 

I’LL THINK OF YOU

I’ll think of you
when I get caught
in early summer storms.
I’ll remember how
the rain leaked through the sunroof
before I finally got it fixed
and drenched
the fabric of the seat
and changed
the color of your jeans
from light to dark.
I’d apologize,
and you’d say,
Please don’t start.
There’s nowhere that I’d rather be
than with you in your messed-up car.
I’d laugh and drive around to try
to find a place to park.
And we’d run down the battery
of my dented ’04 SUV,
letting a scratched antique-store DVD
play dimly on the backseat screen.
A white crop top with unraveling seams
and a damp swimsuit still underneath.
Beach-bleached hair and sunburnt cheeks.
3 A.M.
Empty streets.
I’ll try my hardest not to think of you,
then I’ll feel sad when I start to forget. I’ll wish
I could get these memories out of my head
but find some other place to keep them,
like a box beneath my bed locked
with a key that I can’t find,
because then I wouldn’t have to relive them
but at least I’d know
they’re alive.

HOMEBODY

I’m most at home
in my own body
when it’s raining,
when I’m watering my plants,
when I’m writing,
when I’m painting,
when I dance,
when I’m holding up a book,
when I’m lying in the grass,
when I’m finding four-leaf clovers,
when I cry, and when I laugh.

*

I think it’s lovely that
I never will have
fully learned myself;
I am complex. I am vast,
and this body where my soul dwells
will continue to discover
what it is that lets in peace
and love and light—
what it is that leads me home
after the long night.

IDYLLIC

I know I will look back and
be so incredibly
grateful for this exact
version of me,
who is scared out of her mind,
who just wants to sleep,
who is grasping at light like
she needs it to breathe,
who is messy and hopeful
and often quite blue.
This part’s not idyllic.
This part matters, too.

I TRY MY BEST

I try my best
to keep my head
above the water.
I buy the yellow flowers.
I play kind music in the shower.

*

I try my best
not to melt
too deep into the couch.
I take my thirty-minute walks.
I wave to all the neighbors’ dogs.

*

I sign up for the gym,
and I go four times a week,
and I take care of my skin,
and I stop drinking caffeine,
and I wake up with the sun,
and I keep the kitchen clean.
I try not to come undone.
I try not to fall all the way down the sink.

*

I try my best
to believe that it’s not permanent.
I try my best
to remember how time heals.
I try my best
to exist with this discomfort,
but the one thing I have not done
is allow myself
to feel.

BE KIND TO YOURSELF

I hope today you remember that
the sky is not humiliated by its vastness,
and the mountains remain unashamed
of their height.
Mother Earth and her oceans are not afraid of their size,
and the sun is not concerned if someone has
to squint their eyes—
it will shine.
And it will not apologize for
its light.
And like the trees teach us that it’s okay
to lose our leaves as seasons change
and then come back to life,
I hope that nature teaches us to look at ourselves and
be kind.
I hope that we don’t dim or shrink or fold
into spaces far too tight.
Yes, today I hope you look at yourself and
you are kind.

 —all from Sophie Diener’s Someone Somewhere Maybe (St. Martin’s Press/Griffin, 2023)

“Note to Self” by Sophie Diener

To celebrate reading Sophie’s poetry again, we created an honorary broadside of one of our favorite poems by her, which you can enjoy below: 

Don’t Forget to Read Someone Somewhere Maybe by Sophie Diener

Someone Somewhere Maybe (Paperback) Someone Somewhere Maybe (eBook) Someone Somewhere Maybe (Audiobook)

SOPHIE DIENER: Born and raised in small town southern Ohio, Sophie Diener has been filling up journals for as long as she can remember. She received a bachelor’s degree in Education and is currently residing and teaching in Ohio.