This Viral Poem is the Advice the World Needs Right Now

If you’re like most humans, your thoughts probably tend to run amok in inexplicable ways. The random associations that happen during a couple seconds of silence. The makes-you-bust-out-loud-in-laughter meme that surfaces in your memory at the most inappropriate of times. The cringe thing you blurted out in that bungled attempt at flirting seven years ago that still haunts you.

But sometimes those thoughts take on a trajectory that’s less random. One that’s more self-judgy and what if-y. One that assumes other humans are perceiving and judging you according to the same unrealistic and harsh standards you’ve set for yourself.

Of course, they’re not.

And even though your mom probably spent most of your teenage years assuring you of that, sometimes you stop hearing well-meaning messages, whether from your mom or your therapist or even yourself. That’s when you need to hear it from a girlfriend. A girlfriend who understands what you’re experiencing because she’s shushed the same self-critical thinking in herself. A parasocial girlfriend. A girlfriend like Josie Balka.

In late 2023, the self-described “happiest sad girl you’ll ever meet” and New York Times best-selling author recorded herself reading aloud a poem she had written about reframing these types of thoughts. It quickly went viral, and almost two years later, it’s still drawing a response everywhere it’s shared.

“I had been shopping and having another horrible self-hatred moment in a fitting room,” explains Balka. “And I had this realization that I’ve never remembered anyone’s body and I really don’t think anyone is remembering mine. Then I just started to think of all the other scenarios that we think matter but really don’t.”

Since then, her poem has drawn close to 1.5 million likes on TikTok, half a million on Instagram, and no doubt countless sighs by those who encountered it in her recently published book, I Hope You Remember: Poems on Longing, Loving, and Living. 

There’s something about the quiet self-awareness and reassuring knowingness of Balka’s writing that feels like an escape from all the negativity and chaos that exist so loudly in the world. In that reframe, you may be able to understand and begin to transcend those unwanted and toxic thoughts. Sometimes you don’t need someone else to try and fix you. You simply need someone to remind you where to begin to untangle yourself. Balka’s poem is for those times.

I can’t remember anyone I’ve ever seen at a public pool

With such a memorable body, good or bad
That I think about it ever again

I’ve never been enamored with an attractive person at a bar
or in an airport

Enough for them to grab my attention more than just the once
I’ve never thought
“I wonder if that woman’s jeans are a bigger size this year than they
were last year”

I’ve never sat at a table at a party and repeated a story about
The way someone’s arms looked in their tank top
Or which notch someone had their belt on when I saw them today
When I talk about my friends, sometimes I will bother to note that

they are beautiful, yes
But I will list the things that make them that way
That they’re funny and thoughtful
Kind and caring
Strange and lovely
Not that their frame is small or their clothes are expensive.

Because it is one thing to want to be looked at
And another to want to be known.

“I cannot wait for you to meet her, she’s in such good shape”
Doesn’t roll off the tongue like
“I can’t wait for you to meet her, she’s so nice and funny, you are going to love her.”

Some things are here to stay, and some things are bound to go
And I promise from the deepest part of my soul

You will be remembered for the way that you are
Not the way that you look.

Excerpted from I Hope You Remember: Poems on Longing, Loving, and Living, written by Josie Balka and published by Simon & Schuster’s Simon Element.