How did you begin this piece? Did the poem take a sudden turn that even you didn’t expect while writing?

I began this piece during the early beginnings of the pandemic. Being enclosed and tightened in my room, I have felt depressed and started becoming quieter and overwhelmed with everything around me. In which, inspired my poem “Cold Show” to be more focused on mental illness or any of its kind itself. As for the poem, it didn’t take a sudden turn in any way as it is how I had expected it to be. The spike in mental illness and the media as society, I brought these two and played around with them until I found a profound ending in my poem.

What made you think of this specific office type setting?

To be honest, I just popped in my head to have an office building as the main setting. To be fair, I have thought about enclosed settings while thinking about it. But, an office building, in my own interpretation, represents an isolated closure to yourself to think and imagine possibilities that you could’ve done before you got in here in the first place While depression and anxiety sparks overtime for sitting and slouching most of the time, I feel like an office building is also to reflect and, despite our low self esteem, along the way we’ll find a hint of satisfaction in our work lives.

Read Matthew’s poem “Cold Show.”