My mind is a poem. I stand like a freak amongst night shadows and street vents, rushing idiotically behind my left hand and my inspirational right hand. I write to free myself. My young mind uncoils with emotions that spill out onto the paper, and they will remain there until the dust of future years rolls them off the surface.

I keep a leather book, whose crisp yellowed pages and beautifully frayed edges are filled with my personal philosophy, my personal statements, and my metaphysical complexities. It is in the leather binding that my elbows and fingertips steadily rust. There is an owl carved into the leather of the front cover. Its wisdom, its many tall-standing years make me want to grow and learn. I keep the physical book in my palm, by my side; I keep the book of my soul inside and in a constant process of flowing outward into my hand and filling back up inside my mind. It is in our self-reliant philosophy that we live engrained in heartbreak and grow in reconciliation. My leather book, as I have come to believe, will never run out of pages. It has remained half-full and half-anxious through love, heartbreak, torment, achievement, and most importantly, hours amounting to years of growth.
I was first inspired to write at an early age and have been feeding on a variety of inspiration ever since. Writing has become the filler for every void, loss, or absence in my life, taking on and breaking out, the words that were embedded in the looking glass. Words have come to mean so much to me. Words are to me what paint, pastels, or tiles, are to an artist. I see every word uniquely and in a different light each time I encounter it. My muse lies in my heart, in human growth, in love, in heartbreak. My works are based on my personal experiences, my personal growth. I am the wonder in the world and the space between my hands. Every day brings new words. The struggles, the blessings, and the memories all spell out the words which beautifully crowd my inner self.

Every onrush is brought on by new hopes, new dreams, new tears, and new encounters. The life I live on paper is above the human head. It is steps above physicality. My words are not observant words. They are foreign to the mind, but familiar to the heart. They are familiar when on their own, together, and in a poem.


The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines a poem as a “composition in verse.” If one may wish to stick by this definition, then so be it, but I must disagree. Can it be that a poem is simply just a composition in verse? Imagine Dickinson devoting her entire life to writing “compositions in verse.” I cannot fathom such a possibility. It is in the texture of the rain that our remaining years become apparent. Ms. Dickinson had expression of inner self in mind. She used her paper to let her guard down, to preach her words, her talents.

The dictionary may be the greatest of all human resources, but it cannot break into our souls. Our souls empower the poetry. The poetry is a self-reflection, a written soul. I wrote a letter to myself and kept it in a romance novel. I called this letter a poem. The paragraphs and the pages, though lovely and sometimes enchanting, can sometimes amount to less in feeling than a few horizontal lines of beautiful words and elegant phrasing. We are all unique on paper. Our syllables are distinctively unlike one another’s. I am a listener who kisses every moment to the last; we are all each other, one another, once again. When it comes down to it, our own words, though unique and distinctively ours, are part of a universal language.

I write beneath the fresh-smelling leather, beginning with a composition in verse and ending with a beautifully woven, free-versed literary work. The weaving process is what keeps me moving day to day. It keeps me alive inside. It is in the texture of my own skin and the swirl of my hand that I become radiant. It is in the ninety degree angles of each bent knuckle that the rain falls with new rhythm, with new feeling. It is in my own palm, my own nerves, myself.