Fingers to keys:

A familiar click-clacking symphony that warms my heart and feeds my soul.

I’m throwing words to my thoughts, my emotions, my trials and tribulations out into the abyss.

For once I’m not silent.

I can now break out of my -falsely- perfect, outward mold.

 

Nestled here in these lines are things that roam from time to time

in the deepest quarry of my mind.

Poetry has given me the ability to free some of the heaviest boulders up there.

It has lifted me up when others were so very determined to push me down,

It has given me solace when the few who love me unconditionally are not around.

 

Do you know what it’s like to feel stifled and shut out?

Like your screams will forever be locked inside, waiting for something to ultimately give out?

I can tell you that these are sentiments I hold close, magnified.

They are things that I struggle with, things that I hide.

 

Poetry, for me personally, taps the inner flume that encases this anguish.

It enables me to let out the screams, all my demons, every wish.

It is from this art that I’ve learned to let go.

Learned to trust again, learned that even the best of us need time to grow.

When I’m sitting alone with my laptop, fingers poised at the ready,

I can actually take a moment to pause and let myself weigh all my hardships, even the most heavy.

 

On the outside I am a girl on a mission.

On the precipice of a (hopefully) prodigious medical career,

Something that every brownnosing adult who poses that prodding “What are you doing after college?”

query loves to hear.

 

Inside is something of a different realm.

One where I feel that I’m really not at the helm

of my life, of my journey, of my path to the top.

Even now, after years of psychotherapy, my head is not always somewhere

the ravenous armchair thinkers of our social media age would label a “safe space”.

But it is a place where poetry has clambered inside and posted up somewhat of a permanent residence.

Poetry has finagled some rather industrious remodeling in here.

Where once there would be storm clouds, now there is a strange absence of fear.

This is the greatest lesson that poetry has instilled in me.

You do not have to be fearless, just willing to let your fear fly free.

 

Regardless of what the public reception of your work will look like,

You may not believe words could make a difference,

yet for someone who is similarly lost out there…they just might.