Writing

I've been told before that I have a way with words. It's a gift I suppose, though it doesn't always feel like one. There are times when I start writing and the things I am writing I don't even think about before I write them. They just flow through me like someone else is typing or holding the pen in their hands. My favorite poems have been written in this way, but the one I want to share with you now is different. It was written with purposeful intent. It's job was to teach my students how to write in my academic enrichment class. It started with a "seed book"--a list of ideas in which you choose one to grow. I chose the word crying. I didn't feel it at the time. I was quite joyful. The words didn't flow through me, they were carefully thought out and meticulously changed. However, a week after I wrote the poem, as I lay on my pillow crying after hearing that Dan was going to start seeing someone, I realized that the poem I had so painstakingly drafted, was prophetic: Crying on my pillow, warm tears on my cheek, wet sorrows pooling in ravenous seas. Pain cascades down waterfalls of dreams leaving emptiness in its path. Yet in the shadows of the void a freedom persists. Tears of liberty sparkle leaving broken hearts in the pain of past memories.