The Story Behind My Poem “The Shelf Gallery”

Walking Down Memory Lane

As I dissect the poem I once wrote on my pad in the middle of the night, I find myself returning to the same contemplative moment.

I remember sitting at my desk, surrounded by scattered notes, medical textbooks, reviewers, laboratory manuals, uploaded video lectures, and recorded Zoom classes in the LMS. The room was quiet, but my mind was not. I looked at the pile of responsibilities in front of me and wondered—if I had chosen the other door in life, would it have been easier?

If I wrote about the things I truly cared about—about the stories that kept knocking inside my mind—would the heaviness in my ribs disappear in a simple whoosh?

In this series, I want to talk about a poem I wrote during college. It eventually became part of the collection of poems included in my book CLAIRVOYANCE: Taking It All for the World to See.

But more than explaining the poem itself, I want to share the mental space I was in when I wrote it.

The poem is a collage of personal memories, literary influences—some intentional, others instinctive—and cultural references that shaped my imagination as a reader and aspiring writer.

Rather than telling a straightforward story, the poem moves through fragments: images, titles, names I gathered from books I had read, and stories I encountered during my school years.

In many ways, the poem reflects how literature slowly accumulates in a writer’s mind.

“beware the nones of April”

The title echoes the well-known phrase “Beware the Ides of March,” often associated with betrayal and fate in classical literature.

By shifting the warning from March to April, the poem turns the idea inward.

As someone born on the seventh day of April, I deliberately inserted my birth month into the poem. April often symbolizes renewal, youth, and beginnings.

“Beware the Nones of April.”

When I first wrote that line, it felt like a quiet prophecy—almost as if I were announcing that on the seventh day of April, a creative writer was born.

But when I revisit it now, I realize how personal it truly was.

While writing this introduction years later, I found myself remembering the boy I dated in high school, the boy who broke my heart, the friends who betrayed me, and the quiet pains I once wished I could warn everyone about.

It became something like an ode to myself.

A reminder that the moment I entered this world, I also entered the full range of human experiences—pain, happiness, betrayal, change, and redemption.

“thirteEnth”

The number thirteen often carries the weight of superstition or turning points. In many stories, it marks the threshold between childhood and adolescence.

In this poem, however, the number does not refer to a date.

It refers to my age.

Thirteen was the age when I still believed the world was mostly sunshine.

It was the age when I thought that if I shone brightly enough, I could brighten the lives of everyone around me.

Looking back, this line feels like a quiet message to my younger self—the girl who believed that kindness alone could light up someone else’s darkness.

Eventually, I learned that even if we fill the world around us with brightness, we cannot always brighten someone else’s grey days.

“1984, upstairs is a woman”

This line introduces a scene that feels quiet and observational.

The year itself reminds me of my mother’s girlhood. At one point, she too was thirteen.

As the third-generation firstborn daughter in our family, I often found myself wondering about her younger years.

Was she as gullible as I was when she was my age?

The image of the woman upstairs also brings me back to the women I have always looked up to.

In the house where I grew up, my sisters and I shared a room upstairs. Across from us was the room where my Lola—my grandmother—spent her final days.

I remember her as a warm old woman, full of wisdom and stories.

Sometimes I feel that we shared more similarities than I was willing to admit to myself back then.

This line is for the woman who birthed the woman who raised the woman I eventually became.

“piano, she teaches”

No one in my home actually plays the piano.

But when I wrote this line, I was thinking about my mother.

My mother is an elementary school teacher. She was the one who taught me how to read and write.

The piano in the poem becomes a metaphor.

Just like piano keys move between black and white notes, life moves between joy and difficulty.

Because my mother taught me how to read and write, I eventually learned how to write my own stories.

“girls in the garDen… age’s thirteen years”

The image of girls in a garden suggests innocence, youth, and a moment of transition. Gardens often symbolize growth, learning, and possibility.

The age thirteen again emphasizes the threshold between childhood and adulthood.

This garden, in my mind, talked about my family’s main source of income—farming. I saw myself playing by the field, together with my sisters, accompanying our parents to the cornfield. It also reminded me of my younger self gardening by my high school.

When I was younger, my Pa used to tell us to study hard so we’d land ourselves a decent job and be able to sustain our needs and likes. My parents wanted me and my sisters to lead a life that is self-sufficient.

I remember the smell of the freshly plowed fields. The corn near our home.

The garden felt like home. During the time I wrote this when I was in college, I terribly missed home. The challenges in college made me miss being young and carefree. I wanted to go home and be pampered by my family, and just by the idea of the garden reminded me that I wanted to be in the place where I belong.

Sometimes the garden was not just a place—it was the feeling of belonging.