I remember the first time I wrote poetry,

I remember the blood pooling out of me suddenly becoming ink

How the blade suddenly became a sharp pen-

                               

I remember the first time I wrote poetry,

Thinking back I remember how I couldn’t erase any mistake that I had made both in my poetry and in my life because I had taken the ink out of the sharp pen already-

 

You see I remember the first time I didn’t write poetry but instead I drew a picture

I remember saying in this picture that “the color of my angry flame was this unusual blue color”-

The irony stretching my eyes so open I couldn’t stop the water suddenly becoming this ocean that hadn’t been there before-

My flame in that poem was so red that it had become blue

That anger I had so unusual that it was no longer anger but a fire built of sadness fueled so much by water it had to come pooling out somehow

 

This undeniable anger turned to sadness they kept telling me wasn’t normal

But how can it not be if it is my normal

This is how I’ve been living and truth be told it is how I will continue to live-

 

So don’t tell me what normal is because this is my normal

Stop telling me that I just need to calm down because maybe sometimes I just need to go up

Stop telling me to quit fueling my anger because there is no more fight left in me to fuel it,

 

You see I wish I can describe to you how it feels like

How it feels to constantly have to cover my blue fire with this fake red one

I want to tell you how it feels to not be able to breathe 24/7 because the smoke has reached my lungs

I want to tell you how it feels to have written my first poem not knowing that it would soon become my oxygen tank,

I want to be able to tell you what it’s like to be so consumed by emotion, that it weighs upon my chest

I want to be able to tell you how pulling it off is the most difficult thing because it then becomes missed placed into a burning flame

I want to be able to tell you that sometimes I used to think about raising up so high I can barely move because at least then my feet would never have to touch that burning fire ever again