I told myself a few years ago
when my heart was left abandoned
on a dusty, cracked road with no one else to go home to

"I wanna start writing poetry again"
as I numbed all the pain and prepared all the stolen luggage
to start life anew and take myself far from the people who knew
the lost soul I was back then
and maybe… forget

Instead,
I remembered

I remember when I started writing poems at 11
I wrote my way through teenage angst and unexplained tears
regret, confusion, hatred at the world that didn't seem to understand me, when the words did

I grew older and by 16, I saw how anger turned into sadness and sadness turned into love
and every poem I wrote took me to places higher than my hands could ever reach
a world of connections, hidden meanings, and clarity

Clarity —

until love turned me blind and I began writing poems to lie
to myself that I loved the person who said he loved me yet touched me in places the words never did
as I hid in my own broken corridors for the last two years
with a poet who lost all the words she had to her fears
because she gave them all away to those who didn’t even know how to read poetry

Years passed and now the poet has awoken
A new light shining in the places she thought she had forgotten
endlessly flowing with words, words, words
serving as a ticket to the unseen tomorrow
she's now willing to take

And maybe until now she's still afraid to write the next line

But she has begun to realize —
she can never escape from poetry

She can only pick up the pen once again.