Me in 2010, taken at my former job to send to Dre, who’d later become my husband. The Pages Bleed blog was about two years old at the time.
Today’s poetry challenge ends with the beloved villanelle. This has been an amazing journey that I’m grateful to have taken everyone on, and I’m grateful to those who joined in as well. One of the refrains nods to when my public writing began, and those who have been rocking with me for a while will surely recognize it. Enjoy it, and thank you.
I Kept Writing Because the Pages Bleed
A poetry challenge, not knowing who would read.
I didn’t know the heights that it would grow,
Yet I kept writing because the pages bleed.
Each day I watered this poetic seed
Causing words to dance, my pen to flow.
A poetry challenge, not knowing who would read.
It’s like fire burning; my writing, now my need.
Sometimes I longed to stop; no one would know,
Yet I kept writing because the pages bleed.
Another poet’s work inspired this deed,
I’m thankful for this seed that she did sow—
A poetry challenge, not knowing who would read.
And on I wrote—phrases flew with speed.
My thoughts the payment that I know I owe.
Yet I kept writing because the pages bleed.
Today this stops, but on my words will lead
as brand new life from my fingers flow.
A poetry challenge, not knowing who would read,
Yet I kept writing because the pages bleed.
© 2026 Candace A. Jones. All Rights Reserved.
The featured image is from one of the many journals I kept while managing my first blog site, The Pages Bleed, which was active from 2008 to 2016.
