In Ethiopian poetry, “wax and gold” is a traditional linguistic tool that has been used for centuries to deliver a double meaning: the surface, or literal meaning, is the wax, while the hidden or true meaning is the gold. Wax and gold provides an analytical adventure in music, poetry, and many forms of media. Ethiopian schools will dedicate entire courses to helping students learn to identify the wax and gold in traditional literature.

Professor Levine not only referenced the practice to frame his book, but taught me different forms of wax and gold in almost every working session. Having done his field study in the North Shewa region, he learned a rich form of Amharic and constantly used sayings that challenged my knowledge of the language. I became enthralled with finding the gold in each saying. Then I started to find the practice in the lyrics of my favorite songs.

Wax and gold slowly started to shape the way I wrote poetry in English. You could read my poems on the surface and enjoy the wax, but if you dug deeper, you would be rewarded with the gold. Sometimes the gold is hard to find, requiring thoughtful reflection. Other times, I add Easter eggs to provide clues along the journey.

When you read Call Me Mahi (which is officially out!!), you will find wax and gold in every poem. Funny enough, I didn’t realize how much I used this tool in this book until I did a live reading over the weekend. While explaining the acknowledgements, which include the late Professor Levine, it dawned on me just how much wax and gold has become a guiding force in my poetry.

It made me think about how much of our creative voices are formed without us realizing it.

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Sometimes, we spend years collecting little pieces of ourselves without knowing what they will become. A professor introduces us to an idea. A song teaches us how to feel a sentence. A language gives us a new way to understand what can be said—and what can be left unsaid.

Years later, those lessons resurface in something entirely our own.

I started writing poetry long before I ever imagined publishing a book. And I certainly didn’t sit down to write Call Me Mahi thinking, “I’m going to fill this book with wax and gold.” But somewhere along the way, that way of seeing the world became part of the way I write.

It made me think about how much of our creative voices are formed without us realizing it.

We collect things along the way: phrases our grandparents used, songs we heard growing up, books that changed how we see the world, teachers who gave us a new language for something we already felt. We carry them with us, sometimes for years, without realizing they are becoming part of our own voice.

I think that’s what happened with wax and gold.

What began as something I was learning to recognize in someone else’s language eventually became something I instinctively looked for in my own writing. I didn’t set out to carry this tradition into an English-language poetry collection. I just wrote the way I had learned to see.

And maybe that is the gold.

Not always knowing exactly where our voice comes from, but looking back one day and recognizing the people, places, languages, and stories that helped shape it.

I’m grateful that Professor Levine was one of mine.

Call Me Mahi: Poems for Lovers & Fighters is officially out in paperback and Kindle on Amazon. If you’ve been following along, sharing, pre-ordering, or simply waiting to see what I’ve been writing all this time—thank you from the bottom of my heart! You’ve made this debut so special.

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But no amount of daydreaming would prepare me for the real thing. Becoming a first time author feels like creating the most permanent thing I have ever made. A book that will outlast my lifetime, my family members’ lifetimes, and even the online platforms it will be sold on (sorry, Amazon). A bunch of ideas that once floated around my head and in my laptop are now cemented into bound pages with a timeless ISBN.

Writing the book felt very different than publishing it. When I wrote the poems in this collection, I felt like a little hermit in my office or in different locations around the world. I secretly drafted, edited, and honed my words without any outside interference. The poems lived in their own little dimension, where only I could see them and read them.

Once I started sharing drafts with my editor and even watched my husband read the entire book in one sitting, I realized the book would take on its own life. Each person started to find new meaning in the words, drawing connections from their own life experiences, and the book started to take on its own life. The book is no longer mine, it simply chose me as a vessel.

And I think that is one of the strangest parts of becoming a first-time author: you have to learn how to let people misunderstand you.

When something comes directly from your own life, it is tempting to want to explain every line. To tell people what really happened. To clarify which poem was about which person, which feeling was mine, which parts were exaggerated, which parts were painfully literal.

But eventually, the work must stand on its own.

You have to trust that the person reading it doesn’t need the same interpretation you had when you wrote it.

And then there is the part nobody romanticizes when they talk about becoming an author: you have to become the person who asks people to read it.

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There is something deeply uncomfortable about making something intimate and then saying, “Would you like to buy this?”

I spent months writing poems that required me to be completely honest with myself, only to arrive at launch week and realize that honesty wasn’t the final step. I also had to learn how to talk about my work without apologizing for wanting people to see it.

Maybe that is what nobody tells you about becoming a first-time author. You don’t just have to write the book. You have to become the woman who can hold everything that comes after writing it.

The questions. The opinions. The interpretations. The sales numbers. The silence. The excitement. The people who see themselves in your words. The people who don’t.

And somehow, you have to keep believing in the thing you made through all of it.

I don’t know if I feel like I’ve fully become an author yet. Maybe there is no moment when that transformation feels complete. Maybe you just keep doing the work until one day you look up and realize you have become the person you once imagined sitting in that sterile boardroom, holding a book with your name on it.

But the reality is so much sweeter than any scenario I could have imagined.

Call Me Mahi: Poems for Lovers and Fighters officially drops August 28. The paperback will be available on Amazon, and the Kindle e-book is already available for pre-order.

My most difficult poem to publish was the one most people could relate to. The kind of experience we are told to keep to ourselves, even though we suffer internally. The kind of suffering that is impolite to share with others. The kind of story that is too powerful when we refuse to keep it hidden.

Writing the poem was the last piece of my healing journey. I had tried to box the pain away in my morning sessions at the boxing gym, wondering if I could hit the heavy bag enough to make it stop hurting. I had tried to talk the pain away through talk therapy, facing a wonderfully empathetic and supportive mental health professional. I had even tried to share my experiences with my loved ones, but no one could fully understand. No one had the words to make the grief disappear.

But even as I wrote it, I worried if this truth was too much to read. Could I publish my experience, even as I struggled to talk about it with so many people in my life? Could I put my pain on such a large platform? Could I reveal the most raw parts of myself to the reader? The truth is, the choice wasn’t mine. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t have published it. I just knew that so many people needed to read it and feel seen.

Who was I even protecting myself from? Especially when writing was always my safe space. I remember as a child, I would apologize to my diary when I hadn’t written in more than a week. It felt so unnatural to hide parts of my life from my journal. In many ways, this book would have felt incomplete and inauthentic without this poem. The whole structure of the book would feel incomplete, and the symbolism of the number 28 that weaves through the poems would collapse.

The more I read the poem during the editing process, the more I realized that the only thing I was afraid of was my own humanity. I was afraid of people seeing the tenderest parts of me. I was afraid of people who know me in real life asking why I hadn’t shared the experience in real time. I was afraid of people judging my healing process.

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In the first draft of the poem, I tried to filter my story and make it difficult to parse out the intimate details. But my editor challenged me to dig deeper, exposing where I was holding back. Then I decided I wanted to push far beyond my comfort zone and write like no one would read it. When I let myself go full force, the poem quickly became one of my favorites in the collection.

The journey of writing this terrifyingly honest poem came with a choice. Was I going to keep protecting myself from being seen, or was I going to trust that the truth was worth revealing? I chose the latter. I didn’t go through the journey of writing a book to make myself more palatable. I wanted to write the kind of poems that reach into the places we are often too afraid to name, the places we are taught to suffer through quietly.

Maybe that is what scared me most about publishing this poem.

Not that people would know what happened to me, but that they would see how deeply it affected me.

They would see my grief, my humanity, and the parts of me that were still tender.

And eventually, I realized I could survive being seen. So I left the poem in the book.

I was afraid of people seeing my humanity. Now I’m hoping they see a little bit of their own.

If you want to read the poem that scared me the most to publish, you can pre-order Call Me Mahi: Poems for Lovers and Fighters now on Kindle.

The paperback version will be released on August 28, 2026, and I can’t wait for you to hold this book in your hands.

Pre-order the Kindle edition now, or mark your calendar for August 28 for the paperback.

Thank you for letting me share these poems with you. I hope when you read them, you find a little bit of yourself in the pages.

He was asked, “What are three words to describe Mahlet?” He answered each and every question so thoughtfully, but the three words he chose for this question were “generous, loving…and powerful.” The last one really touched me.

One of the reasons I never really aspired to marriage growing up was because I worried about not having the space to feel powerful. From a very young age, I always wanted to be a force. I wanted to shine, bloom, and grow without being tethered by the insecurity of a man. So, to hear my husband say that my power was one of his favorite qualities made me feel incredibly lucky.

Powerful women have always been feared by the world. They are persecuted for being witches when they speak of their prophetic dreams. They are demonized as promiscuous when they wear clothes that make them feel free. They are barred from classrooms and corporate boardrooms to keep mediocre men in power.

Even in literature, there is a desire to keep women dainty, small, and powerless. A damsel waiting for her prince charming. A wife who dedicates her whole life to the desires of a man. A daughter who throws away her dreams to please her father. But those stories have never caught my attention. I remember being in middle school and realizing I was far more drawn to Leo Tolstoy’s complex portrayals of women than Jane Austen’s.

This book of poems is for the women who find it just as romantic as I do to be called powerful. Because you don’t have to choose between being powerful and being loved. I don’t think power makes a woman less romantic. If anything, I think there is something deeply romantic about being loved without having to surrender yourself.

The women I’m writing for are not powerful because they have authority. They’re powerful because they fully belong to themselves. We are often taught that being lovable requires being less: less opinionated, less ambitious, less loud, less independent, less confident, and less complicated.

But I’m writing for the women who truly believe that you can have it all. You can build a family without abandoning your ambitions. You can be soft without being submissive. You can be romantic without losing yourself in another person. You can be a lover and a fighter.

These are the women I wrote Call Me Mahi for. The women who are still becoming themselves. The women who have had to unlearn the idea that their power makes them difficult to love. The women who know that there is nothing more beautiful than being fully yourself and finding someone who loves you there.

I wrote these poems for the women who want to be held without being contained. For the women who want partnership without surrender. For the women who have big hearts, big dreams, big feelings, and no interest in making themselves smaller to make someone else comfortable.

I wrote this book for the lovers and the fighters. And, perhaps most importantly, for the women who have realized they were never meant to choose between the two.

If this book feels like it was written for you, I’d love for you to have one of the first copies.

A small batch of signed, limited-edition paperback copies of Call Me Mahi: Poems for Lovers and Fighters is now available for pre-order.

Each copy will be personally signed by me, and once this batch is gone, it’s gone. First come, first served.

Call Me Mahi officially releases August 28, 2026.

Pre-Order Your Signed Copy Here

Then I turned 28 and decided that, when interviewing for new law firm jobs, I wanted to be addressed correctly. I introduced myself as “Ma-ha-late” and encouraged my new colleagues to call me “Mahi” for short, which is the natural nickname for Mahlet in my native language. I couldn’t have expected how healing it would be to experience my name with the same familiarity in both languages.

Watching my new colleagues and friends embrace my name changed me for good. Because being told my name was too much made me feel like I was too much. Too much to accommodate. Too much to understand. Too much to respect. But reclaiming my name as it was meant to be said unlocked new levels of intimacy in both my existing and new relationships.

For most of the year I spent writing this book, I had several other possible titles come to mind. But I love books where you can find the title somewhere in a poem, so I was open to allowing the title to evolve with the poems themselves. When I submitted my first manuscript to the editor, I put “Call Me Mahi” at the top of the list. It felt so natural to invite readers to call me by my nickname.

I am deeply inspired by the work of Persian poets Rumi and Hafez. I still aspire to learn just enough Farsi to experience their writing in their native language. But what strikes me about their pen names is the intimacy they create by using their nicknames.

In Ethiopian culture, it can feel impersonal to call someone by their full first name after you meet them. Nicknames are quickly adopted, and in the case of Mahlet, Mahi tends to roll right off people’s tongues. I first grew fond of the nickname when I spent a summer interning in Addis Ababa, where colleagues and new friends instantly called me Mahi or Mahiye.

With this title, I want the reader to feel like we may have already met, in this lifetime or another. The poems are too intimate for first names. We know each other better than that.

Plus, with my Midheaven in Scorpio, I love being semi-anonymous. You will not find an author headshot in the book above my bio, just a simple invitation to Call Me Mahi.

And now, I’d love for you to step into these pages with me.

Pre-Order the e-book on Kindle

Listen to the soundtrack on Spotify

And stay tuned for paperback pre-order details, along with how to secure one of the very first signed copies.

Until then,
Call me Mahi.

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From a young age, I mapped out my understanding of relationships in my journal entries. I would recount conversations and interactions with my peers. I would note their zodiac signs, family patterns, and other observations from our conversations. I wanted to understand people more deeply and, through these relationships, gain a better understanding of myself.

But the only form of writing that could reflect my experience of relationships was poetry.

Poetry had no rules, regulations, or restrictions. It allowed for piercing words to be accepted with grace. It allowed me to defy the prompt of a school assignment. Poetry felt like the quietest revolution.

Through high school, I competed in the Original Prose and Poetry event on the Speech and Debate team. It felt like a place where poetry could be my sport. I would spend hundreds of hours writing, editing, rehearsing, and getting scathing feedback from my coaches on my performance.

When it came time to apply to colleges, I ditched my traditional personal statement and wrote my dream school, the University of Chicago, a poetic insight into my life as a writer. It was a huge gamble. No one had reviewed or edited my statement, but I thought I had nothing to lose when acceptance to my dream school seemed like such a long shot. Months later, I received my acceptance letter.

But in my journey through higher education, poetry became a practice that was confined to my journal. Long gone were the days of performing poetry at weekend competitions in a pantsuit. Instead, I kept my creative writing to myself and pursued academic forms of writing with fervor. I wanted to be the best writer I could be, and law school seemed like the natural next step.

Learning how to write for academic, legal, and corporate spaces offered me a needed discipline in my writing. I developed a sharp eye for even the smallest details, identifying every incorrectly italicized punctuation mark to earn my spot on a law journal. I became an expert at translating complex topics into bite-sized pieces. But sadly, I put my first love of writing poems on the backburner.

Just One Gursha was the start of my journey back into creative writing. It created a community where I could tell stories of food, the stars, relationships, and so much more. Without Just One Gursha, this Substack would not exist, and I would have stayed in the “dark ages” of selling my creativity to corporations forever.

In 2022, I felt the tug. I don’t know how to describe the urgency when a new creative project starts to bloom in my heart, but I felt it fiercely. As I did research on debut books, I started to pursue writing a novel. The novel was a generational story told by a granddaughter and her maternal grandmother.

It felt like the right kind of book to pitch to publishers, but I could not get past one thing: I hated writing a novel. I hated story mapping. I hated tracking character arcs. It became so hard to keep working on it, so I ultimately stopped and never went back to it again. The project simply fizzled, though my heart still wanted to write a book.

Last year, I did The Artist’s Way journey while training for a half marathon and asked myself: “What would I write if I wasn’t worried about who would read it?” The answer was loud and simple: a book of poems. The book I always wanted to write. The book my younger self envisioned me writing.

I started by writing 70 poems, though only 28 made it to the final collection. I wrote a poem every single day for months. No matter how I felt, how busy I was, or whether I was traveling. That’s the simple truth to writing. You have to do it every day. I start every morning writing three pages in my journal, I write campaigns at work, and then I wrap up my day with at least one poem. If you need 10,000 hours to be an expert at something, I’ve easily clocked in 50,000 hours of writing to date.

Writing is not glamorous, but I love it enough to subject myself to its masochistic emotional turns. The poems in Call Me Mahi are some of the easiest and most heartbreaking to write. They poured out of me during a year of intense grief, massive life changes, and rebirths. I remembered how much I loved poetry and how sad I was to have abandoned it, promising to never stray far again.

Call Me Mahi feels like my first mixtape as a published writer. Choosing to write a poetry book relieved me from the worry of pitching books to publishers and liberated me to consider the path I always wanted to take: self-publish. Poetry is delicate. Even the smallest changes can transform heartfelt into cheesy. Self-publishing allows me to protect my work from losing its authenticity.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing more of my journey as a writer and the making of Call Me Mahi. I can’t tell you how honored and excited I am to share this project with all of you. It is such a special chapter in my life and writing career. What a gift to honor it with all of you.

Call Me Mahi will officially be released on August 28, 2026. If you’re a Kindle reader, pre-orders are now available on Amazon. I can’t wait to finally share these poems with you.

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