I was just in
6th grade
2nd period
English class
And bored
o u t  o f  m y  
m i n d
When I heard
The dreaded words:
Group Project
Nightmare fuel
For any Introvert
Awkward
Anxious
Silent
Were the 3 exact
Words
Describing me.
And poetry!?
We had to
Write it?
With other people!
I’d always though
That poetry
Was rather dumb
Just meaningless words
Being thrown around.
A simple chore.
Our teacher saw
Our dismal faces
And laughed.
She quietly said
We could choose
Our groups.
I practically
Ran to the desks
Of my two friends
A girl named
Beverly
With an everlasting
Smile and a boy
Named Dylan
Not afraid
Of anything
Or anyone.
They are both
Still my best allies.
We were facing
Our biggest challenge
Yet-
To write a poem
About the feelings
Of an inanimate object.
And we chose
A shadow.
We spent half the class
Arguing about the font
We used and ended up
With Comic Sans
We used the other half
To gave it the title
“The Outcast Shadow”
Our 4 stanza poem was
About a lonely shadow
Hoping to someday
Escape it’s human captor.
The poem
Wasn’t exactly
Mind Blowing
Average, at best.
But by the end of the week
I had fallen in love
With the stanzas
Lines
And fragments of words
I had fallen in love
With Poetry.
I had finally
Discovered myself.