Back in 2008, I made a conscious decision to love myself. I had come out of a rough relationship and had been making changes to my life for two years to heal from that and retrospectively, I guess I was also healing from a bunch of crappy relationships I had been in before the one I aptly deem as "The Worst". During "The Worst", I hadn't written anything creative for the duration of that relationship and I had been miserable not just from not expressing myself but also from enduring abuse and isolation in silence. Writing and the stage was part of my healing process. I knew I had to decide what I wanted for myself and writing poetry was non-negotiable in the pursuit of my best self.
Over the course of my life, poetry has pulled me out of some dark places in my mind and spirit. As a middle and high school student, I wrote all the time in and out of class. I literally cried into the pages of my notebooks sometimes. In some ways, it has been my conversation with God, concurrently a prayer and an answer. In other ways, it has served as a discovery of self and a board to dive from into deeper healing and understanding. I have no doubts about poetry contributing to my survival. Maybe that sounds a little intense but if Oprah ever asked me one thing I know for sure, that would be it. I also just wrote because I love(d) it. I scribbled new ideas on whatever pieces of paper I could find, a napkin, a receipt, a loose page, until I learned to always carry a notebook and pen. ALWAYS. In any case, here is why I write:
for the little girl inside me who fell in love with craters of the moon
for all the days love
did not show and the days I learned
for the first time and again and again
to have the heart open wide and whole
for the stories I have yet to tell
for the stories I heal from
how trauma loses a little more control in my pen
for the woman I met on a Greyhound once
for the child who does not write but discovers
with my voice, a voice lives inside them
for ancestors whose words visit in dreams
and the shadow of crows wings in the kitchen window
for Marie and Colin
how possibilities evolve to become poet from poem
for the strands on my head
beginning to turn into wisdom
for the times I am not wise at all
for here and now
how the present always gives more than I understand
for understanding
for washerwomen
for Haiti
for what it means to be Black in this world
for generations I will never hold in my hand
for the ears who hear me
and the ones that do not
perhaps one day they will
for us
for hope
for being alive
for living
for breath
for the nights I cannot sleep
for when all I have left are the words
dancing to a hypnotic rhythm in my mind