How Poetry Changed the way that I view myself

The first time that someone ever said my poetry was beautiful…

I was seventeen. The age where you don’t really understand the depth of certain compliments. These days I was starting to finally grasp the concept of self love. I kept coconut oil with me everyday. I made sure that my curls were the way I wanted them to be. This is actually the age where I started writing poetry. I wrote down everything I felt, all of my beliefs, who I wanted to be, who I actually was, my views, what I enjoyed and for someone to even call that beautiful was the first compliment that I really ever took in and applied. To compliment my poetry in that manner was to make what was once just words to me, a beautiful melody to a song that can only be sung in a triumphant tone. For someone to call me beautiful like that, where they truly meant it was astonishing because that was the only time where I knew for sure that the person was actually reading me and studying everything there is to know about me. And with that, the compliment went a long way. 

The first time that someone ever said that my poetry was beautiful they weren’t talking about the writing that I have tracked down with pen and paper but they were talking about me. Because I am poetry. Every thing that I have ever done was poetry. Every time that I speak, my lips form sounds and with those sounds combined a beautiful song is created and the notes drift themselves onto imaginary sheet music only to be played by the grandest of pianos and the most delicately handcrafted of violins. Every time that I have danced, I’ve created a poetic sequence of choreography where if performed by anyone other than me then the steps would be all wrong and there would be no story behind the turns and leaps and pas de bourrées and grand battements. Every significant situation in my life has only been a slam poem just waiting to be performed. Just you reading this is a metaphor waiting to be written. Your life is the poem and you are an author. Every time you laugh or cry a new stanza is created and every sound that you’ve ever made since you were born was just another way to use onomatopoeia to give your readers insight of just what the hell your poem is about. Everytime that you’ve ever fallen in love every nameless item around you becomes personified and the ink slams down onto the paper as if it had just come up with a new invention. Everytime that you’ve ever recovered from heartbreak a new page was created. Every death you’ve ever had to grieve over your sentences stop at a period and you choose whether or not you want to start a new paragraph. Everytime you fall your words drop onto the page. Everytime you sing a scatter of exclamation points dance onto the paper. Every test was just writers block waiting for inspiration. Every paycheck you’ve ever received created new means for imagery. Everytime you spoke, three more metaphors were created. Three more similes. Your words were then compared to everything that you’ve ever experienced. Your story was no longer a fairytale, but a reality captured by words you’ve never written down but still can. 

The first time that someone ever said my poetry was beautiful, I finally realized what my writing had done for me.