“It is very short form. Up for interpretation.”

“This was one of my few very early attempts at poetry. It was also one of the very few moments in my life that I have written unbridled and unstructured. I wrote this piece two years ago, and did not hesitate to bin it straight after it was done. I couldn't read it without feeling scalding hot shame for the way my desperation manifested on the page. It is a poem about desire and unrequited wanting. Why was I expecting my desperation to not show? I loved it because it is mine. I loathed it because it was mine. I am thankful to have never emptied my laptop bin.”

“I trashed this piece because I was told by a friend no one will want to read this. It sounds way too feminist and woke, and there are enough poems on the internet covering this issue. However, I wrote this poem because I was angry, when someone close to me suggested women should stop complaining about periods and menopause because we all have to go through it and that’s just the way it is. This poem was written out of pure rage and also to educate those disillusioned people, that we do not suffer the same way, we all struggle on many different levels, so please do not insist we should just put up with it. It is not a weakness, but a strength.”

“This was a love song to my favorite cat who has a bad heart and other health problems although he’s only seven. I didn’t set out to write a poem, just to show my love and grief in words. The piece might be trash, but Perry is a treasure.”

“This was a purely cathartic piece that I didn't deem good enough for publishing simply because of its rambling tendency and the function it served for myself - to put all of this insurmountable feeling onto a page.”

“I originally wrote this poem on a work shift, destined for the person to whom this poem is written for. This self-enforced notion of privacy meant I didn't want to submit this piece, to wave these feelings in the air so brazenly, but maybe, now realising, maybe I can.”

“An eyewitness account. I like the story and the “punchline” very much but feel the expression at times is rather cumbersome.”

“This is the first poem I wrote inspired by my work as a German teacher in a refugee camp. I’ve made the experience that especially girls who come to Germany only accompanied by one parent often see a kind of “fatherly friend” in me. Therefore, my colleagues often joke about “my daughters”. This poem has a lot of emotional deepth for me. It is probably the poem I have submitted the most times and consequently have received the most rejections for, often with the editors telling me, how much they liked it (but still couldn’t accept it). I put it into my “Abandoned” folder, because I am beginning to think it is too personal and maybe also hard to understand without the background information.”

“ It is one of those pieces which once written immediately dissatisfied me. It was obvious I didn't like but I couldn't change it. I tried moulding the words and the metaphors and yet, I couldn't. I was just stuck. I made peace then this was going be one of my mediocre pieces. The kind that you wrote just for sake of it and never look at it again. My goodbyes to this poem, much like in the poem, reads like distance. Detached and deep, it's a piece I've grown to like for the bitter-sweet emotions attached to it.”

“I trashed it because I don't generally write, and when I do I show very few people, if any. This especially feels too short and maybe even nonsensical to anyone who might not feel the way I do about a sibling. The only reason it's being submitted is because the friend I thanked in the email recommended it, knowing that it would be thrown aside anyway.”

“I wanted this poem to speak very powerfully on the complex relationship between a father and son. How as a son, you try to leave your father’s legacy behind but you are ultimately more alike than you care to admit. Perhaps it was the way i structured this poem or my word choice like using the word adumbrate that caused this poem to be trash.”

“I summed up thirty years of my life in less than 500 words. I was never sure if that was something to be proud of or ashamed of. This is one of the first pieces I wrote after 20-some-years of not writing. Truth is – always felt it was a little too personal to publish but I’ve gotten over that fear.”

“I wish I could remember why I trashed this one, I’ve thought about it often but never submitted it. A little cliché maybe but that has never stopped me before.”

“‘The Longest Night’ was my very first attempt at expressing my feelings on a real life event through poetry. I’m not familiar with writing my own story as well as I’m not familiar with talking about what’s bothering me. I rather write fiction and deal with my feelings alone, but the occurrences that inspired this piece were too much to handle in silence. At first I did not write it to be published, I thought it lacked cohesiveness when I first wrote this poem, and even after some editing it still isn’t exactly what I want it to be. However, I’m deciding on giving it a try, which is unusual for me. I hardly give second chances to myself.”