When I was about eight years old, my sister asked me to help her with her english poetry assignment because she was running out of time and brain juice. I was so excited I didn’t even realize that I was cheating for her. Up until that day, I thought that all poetry consisted of frogs landing on logs, and bugs giving nasty hugs. I had no idea that poetry could be my escape. The day that I cheated for my sister, I discovered a passion. I wrote about roller coasters, beautiful and sad days. I wrote about love, sadness, family, friends, and pain. But most importantly, I wrote about myself. I shared my hope and dreams, but I also shared my fears and heartbreaks. I made myself vulnerable to others, and by doing so, I welcomed people into my life. It’s true that not all of my poetry is about something I have experienced, but each one is about something I have felt, or would feel if I were in another’s shoes. Poetry is my hope, friend, and passion, but most importantly, it is my escape.

Escape

Escape the frosted windows

Fractured doors and foul rooms

Recoil from those trusses that conform the cosmos before you

When slipping ever slightly into darkness and into day

Calibrate your sanity to include heartbreak and rhyme of way

Untangle from your limbs memories of the inert

Insert into vitality legions of virgin virtuosity

For those sunken, swollen, shallows

Hold dejected desperate souls

Who wandered for millenias seeking warmth in the cold

From your silent shapely syllables

Through your course scathed heart

You stirred a walking skeleton

And began rejuvenation

When you spoke of pain they remembered

When you blazoned zeel, they felt

When you bore your soul on parchment

Weary eyes saw one childhood, two hearts

Now you stand upon the hilltop in a frenzy to live free

Don't you see my friend you've found freedom through poetry