literacy memoir//the ways i learned to write

one: The Time. The Time is Now.

“Well, yeah, I used to read for fun,

the same way I used to

lisp my s’s and the way I used

to be four-foot-one.

There are some things you grow out of.”

And, well, I mean, no, no one has ever said that to me, personally.

But because I know all, see all, I can feel it in their icy stares when I try to make small talk

and ask what they’ve been reading lately.

They throw the question back and like grains of sand,

it runs through my open hands.

When was the last time I read for fun?

I shake my head. I can’t remember.

And because I can’t remember, I change the subject.

“Well, I read something for class, but it ended up being okay,

the short story I published in the magazine, about a lawn mower falling in love,

that was okay. Or,

the sparknotes on the crime novel we had to read for class.

I got an A on that paper, though, so I guess

that was okay.”

I shrug it off and remember when I devoured books

hours at a time. I think, somewhere, in a box,

I packed them all off my shelf and brought them with me,

more as a hope than a promise

that I’d have the time.
 

But at least poetry comes, typically,

in quick

short

bites.

I still have time for the way

the lines break at

just the wrong/right

time.

For you, poetry, I still have the time.
 

two: Then, Again.

I loved those light-up shoes.

The way they flashed as I stamped

my feet down the stairs and past

the security alarms

at the library.

The way that as I jump

up each step to the second floor,

they light up the way my heart does.

I’m four, five, six, seven, ...

and there’s something wrong with my mouth.

I can’t say my s’s or my r’s or my

sh/ch/th sounds, my j’s or,

anything else, probably.

My mom has to answer for me,

pass my words along because

no one can understand me outside of

my own little bubble. I wait, as patiently as a

four, five, six, seven, … year old can

as someone who is not me

tries to describe me.

And it’s hard, y’know?

To listen to someone else pass along

what you’ve said, to hear your words

come out of someone else’s mouth.
But expressing the bits of freedom I still have,

I let go of her hand and

I pick, I choose

on the second floor children’s area,

the books I want to read that week.

And when I go downstairs I stand

on my tip-toes and stamp them down

so they glow the way I do,

when I push my books across the counter.

No one has to translate the

smile on my face or the way

I hook myself on every sentence.

And I learn, quickly, that

when my words fail me, others’ words will do.

three: The Spiral-Bound Notebooks Dug Too Deeply

There is no worse pain than holding something too deeply so,

I breathe, and write it down in the dirt.

There is no worse pain than feeling alone so I blow the dust

off of your notebook and read what you’ve written.

It wasn’t always poetry for me, in the past I wrote short stories

with girls who cried too much trying to save the day and

sometimes they did. Sometimes they didn’t.
I knew even fiction couldn’t always be friendly.

And I thought poetry was boring, forms

and lines and syllables and rules, rules, rules.

So I wrote diaries that started with “Dear God,” some nights

and “What did I do wrong” the others, not knowing

that, yes, this was poetry too.

And one day, someone showed me on this beautiful thing called YouTube,

videos of people speaking, sharing, telling,

explaining their lives and how they moved around in their shoes,

and called it poetry.

They called it poetry and I was floored.

This wasn’t dissecting Shakespeare and sucking the joy

out of the way he loved his words.

There weren’t just dead old men but people who looked like me.

Who sounded and acted like me, and people were

paying attention to what they had to say.

They called this all poetry.

They called living, poetry.

And I knew I had to take part.