Imposter Poet
How self-doubt kept me small—and what happened when I finally claimed it.
THE DAILY POEM
Imposter Poet
I’ve always been a poet.
I was a poet even before I identified as one.
Why did I deny it? Why did I resist owning the label?
Why did I allow others to take it away from me?
You shouldn’t be a writer, they would say.
You should be a doctor or a lawyer instead…
Now, that’s the REAL American Dream they would press.
But WHY. WHY, did I listen?
I look back at my writing from decades ago.
Words that were good enough
when I thought they weren’t good enough.
I would watch poets like Rupi Kaur rise and think about how my writing resembled theirs, years before they debuted.
Talent is wasted on the doubtful.
Or is it that doubt wastes the talent away?
How many amazing writers, artists, poets, musicians, and the like, has the world lost over the same stigma?
What a shame, I think now.
What a waste!
A degradation of talent.
Now the voices in my head won’t STFU because
I’ve unleashed them. Allowed them to come through.
Promised them that I would cater to their every need
and not ignore them the way I once did…
when I thought I wasn’t good enough.
© 2026 Carla Monroy
Part of the 100 Day Poetry Project
The Lie I Have Lived With
I wasn’t sure I would ever be holding this book that I wrote in the flesh. I often thought, will I die before I ever publish a book? It was more that I didn’t think I could live up to the author I would need to be once I published a book.
It’s part of the question I’ve been asking myself this week. I started to wonder if I was keeping myself stuck on purpose?
It’s part of the reason I’ve been quiet for the last several weeks. I’ve been standing in a dark corner, holding my little book in disbelief and thinking, Okay, so what do I do now!? Sitting in the overwhelm of that thought sends me into a spiral and good habits I had steadily maintained suddenly get thrown out the window.
Staying Small on Purpose
I have been trying to ponder on things more deeply. Why do I refuse to let go of habits that no longer serve me? Spending time with family recently has brought to light how avoidant I can be of things in my life. I have a desire to change that, but change isn’t always easy. It isn’t always what I want—but I want it to be what I choose.
I have been reading The Courage to be Disliked and the book is structured as a friendly argument between a philosopher and a student. The philosopher is claiming that life is simple. Point blank. Life is only made complicated only by our own minds and there is a lot of truth to that.
It made me ponder whether we conform to the stories we tell ourselves? Do we shrink to fit into the problems we feel that we deserve?
There was a line in a movie I recently saw, that stuck with me. The line was, Sometimes the story we tell ourselves becomes our truth. It’s exactly what I think Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga are referring to in their book.
You can even see that in how I’ve admitted that the reason I haven’t published until now is because I didn’t think I could live up to the responsibility of being an author.
The Moment I Allowed Myself To Be a Poet
This brings me to today’s poem. One that I arrived at without a prompt, but one that occurred at a notable moment in my life. It captured a moment of allowance for me. The moment I stopped waiting to feel like a poet—and let myself be one.
That moment now lives inside American Mexican, my first published collection (on sale now). It is a collection of poems that I have poured my heart and soul into and one that should have been published decades ago.
I don’t know if I’ll ever fully feel like I’ve fully owned the title of poet, but I am no longer waiting for permission to claim it.
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