When,

I wonder,

Did this pen become more than a pen?

When was it tamed and strained and changed, Into the vessel from which I dispel my sins?

 

When,

I speculate,

Did these keys become more than keys?

When did the sound of myself typing poems, become the sound of my serene release?

I asked the question I'll answer the question.

When did poetry become my peace?

 

I know! I know! It didn't. Poetry became me.

 

My love for it didn't spawn from reading The Raven Or A Poison Tree.

It didn't start with Emily Dickinson or Langhston Hughes or John Keats.

It was not built from their work.

It was built from my own feelings.

My feelings keep me writing.

Writing my feelings keeps me healing.

 

The first time I wrote a poem in my journal, about my crush and all of our dealings,

The time I wrote about how fake I was and how I hid behind a mask to fit in and seem appealing,

The time I wrote about being alone and walking alone forever through the world,

The time I wrote about how music inspired me and how it was the only thing that could make me twirl.

The times I wrote about what love should really be like, and all of the writing in between,

 

Healed my heart and kept me out of the dark when I was looking in the mirror but not really seeing.

 

When I was trying to be someone else.

 

When I was fleeing, my own being!

 

When I hated myself because I didn't know myself.

 

Then my first poem arranged a meeting,

Between the real me and the fake me, and it said "I was written by one of you.

We have to figure out which one it was because I can't truly be complete until we do.

I can not truly be complete,

 until By TVann is at the top of my paper.

But if the wrong T writes that up there,

Then poetry won't be the shaper,

Of the next few years of your life

And it will not be your savior.

It won't help you through any tough times and it won't heal you or bend anything in your favor.

 

The ascension of poetry will stop here for you.

 

So ladies, who's it going to be?"

 

And in that moment I lost sight of fake and real,

And for the first time, Only saw me, As T.

 

That's what poetry and being a poet did for me after it healed me.

It helped me find who I truly am and ever since,

I've considered myself to be the poet TVann,

who knows exactly who and what she is.