Writing provides nourishment for my soul

A reprieve for my overly analytic mind,

Saving me every day,

Allowing me to function as an individual.

Without it, my evanescent existence

Would have faded out long ago.

 

Words are the crutches that aide my limping self,

Reaching into dark places within me,

The medium upon which I can reintroduce

Palettes of color and light into my life;

The iris of my soul,

Opening the portals that are my pupils.

 

Words pour out of me,

Handfuls of drifting ash that ignite,

Melding my fiery emotions into poems and stories.

The words are inexorable,

But I do not wish to impede them,

For with each word I write,

The burden in my soul lessens.

I write to understand and to find acceptance.

I write to nudge myself in a positive direction.

 

This self-healing impetus ranges in type

But the outcome remains constant;

My heart unclenches, my emotions unravel,

And I find strength within my trials

As they stare back at me from a wrinkled page.

 

I write about what hurts,

Applying bandages to the lingering wounds,

Allowing me to process how my trials

Have shaped me as a person.

 

Since the dawn of sixth grade,

When the torrent of harassment began

To rain down on my parade,

I have feverishly scribbled down

My hopes and fears

Until the pencils I have written with

Are smaller than how I used to feel.

 

In the seventh grade, my innocence was extinguished,

As every barbed insult ripped at my skin,

Escalating to a single incident

That would leave me shattered on the ground,

Broken in body and spirit.

 

Some battle scars remain;

Both visible and hidden, by their hands and by my own.

The red, angry lines remind me of the physical pain I endured,

But it is the sadistic words their tongues lashed me with that linger.

Contrary to the popular, yet misguided childhood idiom,

I know that sticks and stones may break my bones,

But the bruises will fade away;

While words hurt, inflict, and wound,

Haunting me every day.

 

I write to illustrate how their disparaging words

That once torn me down,

Have only built me up in the long run,

Granting me resilience and compassion;

The trials they put me through

Enclosed me in a cocoon of suffering and depression

That I emerged from years later, metamorphosis complete,

Brimming with a passion to aid those

Who have also heard the sickening snap

Of their wings being torn off their backs,

Left incapable of flight.

 

My words, demanding attention

With their solid, dark shapes

Juxtaposed against white sheets,

Scream louder and more insistently than theirs.

My words build a bridge from my lonely shore

To the vibrant, bustling chaos of everyday life.

I follow the ruminating path of those letters

Towards a brighter future,

Built upon and only strengthened

By the foundation of their ugly, concrete words.

 

They believed they could extinguish me,

Putting out the spark of life

That nestled beneath the constellation of freckles on my collarbone.

But they were wrong.

He believed that I was his bitch,

And that he could control and intimidate me,

Forever playing the cat to my mouse,

Never letting the imprint of filthy hands

Fade from my wilted body,

But he was wrong.

 

They were all wrong.

Once I discovered the power of writing,

My words became more powerful than theirs;

Those truths solidified into armor,

As I repeated them as a mantra

To counter the fear and hopelessness:

I am strong and resilient;

I am not the names they called me;

It was not my fault;

I can construct a better future;

I deserve to be happy;

 

I deserve to be alive.

 

Between the lines of my notebook

Lie my raw emotions,

Linking together strands of words

To give them insurmountable power.

They are my heartstrings,

Embodying what anchors me to reality and sanity.

Words are not just marks on a paper;

They are the blood running through my veins,

The medicine alleviating my pain,

And the sustenance allowing me to grow and thrive.

 

Womb to tomb, I have uttered words,

But until I was given the gift of a silver tongue

And translated my scrambled thoughts into writing,

I never knew that I could soar;

Never again will heavy, bitter words weigh down my soul,

For I am an obsidian raven released into the night,

Reborn from the ink of my own pen.