Reading Poetry

The critter, frail and shaken, cowers at her prowlers. The critter, ensnared. Silent. What is it to break the encapturing trance enrapturing a doe? While the critter stagnates in cowardice, I adapted, I evolved; where the critter submitted to Death - I found Life, Voice. On my tongue! I introduced it to the world. 

White knuckled, red faced, clammy, I stood: one girl amidst cliques of bothered stares, clutching, seemingly choking the microphone in one hand, grasping my notebook in the other against my beating thumping creaking heart, as if it was the only thing keeping me upright – up to Write right. The librarian introduced me as the “master poet”; I was the only one from Poetry Club who showed: the phrase “social suicide” came to mind.

Virginia Wolf, how your Moth trembled before flames, entrapped, suffocating in that window-pane. Virginia, am I not the Moth whose story you refused to write as you wrote your own? Virginia! How do I emerge from this cocoon? 

Words! Words shatter glass walls. Women gaze through glass observing. Confident, the dominant – men. Words. Take back the self like eminent domain, proclaim her birthright, the vocal capacity of her mind, my soul. Words are Evolution, Revolution, and a rush of Realization, rapid and ravishing. Words. Are. Rebellion. 

I was confused. I flourished in this domain, this realm; words could fall from my tongue with the grace of a dove, and I realized this made me more of a carrier Pigeon than an elegant free wing, a caged bird without a song – weak. Small. Dull. 

The mic was situated. The room silent, suffocating stares saturated air and I spoke. Not spectacularly, but words formed, even if they stranded together in distraught shambles. Despite it all, I was content that I was able to share something as personal to a perfectionist like myself as Art with complete strangers, still possessing this insatiable hunger for producing said Art.

Well. A pebble had been tossed at this glass, a car had missed the fawn – but it was nowhere near enough. Mountains did not move, worlds were not thrown off orbit. The moment was… lame? So: I strove for more opportunities to share Poetry with some of the most judgmental beings known to man: teenagers.

Another day came with another fray, a Birth – Day; and I must announce that I bloomed like a vibrant flower on the third day of spring, shedding my wintery catacomb, I arose from an ossuary holding versions of myself, the cowardly, meek, mediocre versions of Self that I had left behind. 

I will never know what the girl two rows back six seats over was laughing about while I recited an ardent feminist piece regarding women’s reproductive rights; but a Phoenix Flame inside my chest is so glad she did. My fear came forth and presented itself, tangible: I. Could. Literally. Hear It.

And it was so…little. It was as if I had feared the rustling of a bush in the woods but all along it was only a cottontail. I slashed through the air – ferocious, agile as the predator in a Sahara. Now, I did not ask. Now, I demanded to. Be. Heard. I ecstatically visited more classrooms after this, prompting snaps and claps and whoops from my spectators. My audience grew.  I was new. I knew. 

I carry this freshness with me now, this unbridled confidence in my work and self, in what I can do with words, with ideas. I recollect these events the impact they have branded me with. I. Am. Indelible. Perpetual, like the legacy words leave on the heart, scarring it with steaming brands, teeming with permanency.

The metamorphosis from trembling, small critter to roaring, Herculean beast will never cease to astound me. I stand astounded.