I remember when…

I remember when I sat in after school study and was wishing I was anywhere else. I had finished my homework. I crossed all the Ts and dotted all the Is. I was finished. It wasn’t perfect but it was finished. I had nothing else to do. What was I going to do now? Study? Hardly. I remember that was the moment my mind was given permission to flow.

I just finished writing an essay analyzing the character of Romeo from Romeo & Juliet. I made some time to read notes on Seamus Heaney and Sylvia Plath. It was time to make my own art. I didn’t know know what I was doing. Having been told for the past three years up until that point that there were rules to poetry, I didn’t know where to start. So I started anyway.

I wrote a poem about the present moment. The quietness of the study hall and how I was simply waiting for the time to be up. I sat back after metaphorically spilling my brain onto the page.

I passed the page to my friend for him to give it a read. I added the caveat that it was something I just whipped up.

“Not bad” my friend wrote in his reply on a sheet of paper. In that moment, I realized that maybe I have a knack for this writing thing. Good for me.