Learning to Open Up

Poetry has always seemed to be in my life, in my blood even

My father is a poet, for my mother at least

He wrote them when he was happy when my mother was pregnant with me

He wrote them when he was unhappy when they got a divorce 2 years after my birth

I was given a stack of papers of stanzas of complex emotions that detail the timeline from blooming love to the first child together to becoming strangers

It's a strange thing having pieces of someone's life story like that, given so freely and openly

I keep my own poetry locked away and I loathe to share it

My jumbled thoughts and feelings feel too naked to be shared

I lock it up in old notebooks and scraps of paper and tucked away, left to never be dealt with

So to have my father share these raw thoughts with me was odd, to say the least

I used to feel like an intruder reading other people’s personal poetry, like I was peeking in from a window and viewing someone in their most vulnerable state

Being the watched was something I never wanted to subject myself to

Now I feel like I’m watching a deer drink from a creek, a simple observer just learning

I have realized there is power in that vulnerability and sometimes there are feelings that can only be explained on the sheets of a journal or secret document hidden with a mundane name

I have learned that sharing your experiences leads to a domino effect of others doing it too, everyone learning and sharing and learning and sharing again

I have yet to fully embrace this thought, posting my abstract work freely but keeping the words too close to my heart kept away

I do not know my father well, but I wonder if he could teach me the art of being unafraid to be open