There once was a girl who spoke in poems.
Her words were English but sounded like Shakespeare
she would've had better luck trying to speak Latin.
At least then a few people
would have understood her.
And because no one understood her
she was always alone
since the day she had stuttered her first words

In elementary school
the girl kicked up dirt on the playground,
not because she was shy
but because the kids shunned her.
Whenever the first through fifth graders
were picking teams for kickball
she was always on team none-of-the-above
because when the girl had even
a fraction of a chance of being picked,
there always seemed to be somebody
who appeared out of thin air who was faster or stronger or cooler,
who pulled the rug out from under her,
leaving the girl to simply smile and skip away to play
by herself

She was too naive back then to know any better
she carried her hope in her hands
a big candle with a small flame
but that flame, though small, stayed strong
always bending with the wind but never blowing out.
Because of this, the girl with a well full of hope
never knew that she was different

At least until she hit middle school.

There the girl got beaten down to the ground
there the students would play tricks on her
and there they hid her things and called her names
"Let's make fun of the freak!" they laughed
before they threw her backpack in the trash.
"Look at her, she's weak!" they pointed
as they watched the tears roll off her cheeks,
dousing the flame of hope she held.

A lot of the time the teachers thought
about asking the girl second questions
because she spent most of her time in the bathroom
crying and sighing,
her lungs inflating and deflating,
soaking the sleeves of the jacket she wore every day.

Oh, that jacket was the only one
who really knew her sorrows.
When her parents asked her how her day was
when she stepped off of the  school bus,
she sobbed as she told them the story of the day.
But since no one understood her
they only ever smiled and nodded
like she had just told them that she
had made a new friend
like she had been talking to the wall instead.
And that's the moment when she
would shoulder past them and stomp up the stairs.
And there she would throw her jacket in the dryer till tomorrow,
because it was the only one who would ever get to know her sorrows.

Until high school.

When the girl hit high school she continued to carry
her candle around,
the wick almost brand new,
like there was never enough hope,
like it had barely been used.
Every day she would set her candle on her desk
and stare out the window,
floating in infinite space
as teacher after teacher
filled the room with white noise
somewhere far away.

She felt numb
looking out at the street,
at the people filing past,
talking and laughing and feeling understood.
And this was always when her own feelings arose,
feelings of jealousy that started from within.
That made her ball up her fists
and want to scream
from the inside out

The glass that held her candle,
because only God knows
what would've happened
if she had held it herself,
started to chip away day by day
along with her heart.

This was a cycle
she repeated every day,
balled fists and scratched up wrists and
angry, angry, angry.
Her fury was so hot
you'd think her candle
would ignite,
but its wick continued
to remain a dud.
Maybe it wasn't the candle's fault.
Maybe she was the dud instead.
Maybe she should just throw
the rest of her life away.
That's all duds were good for anyway.
The. Trash.

Day after dragging day as she did this,
the teachers started to noticed the decline in her learning,
wondering why she was wasting the teacher's time
staring out the window
instead of robotically writing down
and taking notes like everybody else.

After a matter of weeks,
each teacher moved her away from the window
and ****** a notebook into her hands,
forcing her to balance
her candle in one hand and
her notebook in the other.
And instead of staring out the window
she was now forced to stare at empty pages,
as fresh and as crisp as freshly fallen snow
with strict and straight lines that tried to confine her.
Eventually, a pencil came along for the ride
and just wanting to be spared,
she picked up the pencil
and wrote down her thoughts.
Soon she reveled in rebelling against the teachers.

At first, she wrote down the simple things of life,
of boredom and of how
she was tired physically
from nights without rest.
But then she began to write about emotional tiredness,
of anger and pain and sadness
and all of the madness inside of her head.

and oh, it was beautiful!
Her words peeling
off the paper
and becoming as alive as you and me,
born not from love but from raw passion.
Day after day she picked up the pace,
writing so fast she was afraid
she was going to set fire to the page

But it wasn't the only thing that caught fire.

at first, the classroom wavered with smoke,
A smoke that made only the girl
cough and wheeze,
a smoke only she could sniff out.
Whenever she wrote, that smell
followed her around like a stray dog
until, sitting at her desk, she found its source,
a significant spark
that ignited her little candle,
so hot that the wax
was the consistency of water within seconds.
She jumped back,
hardly remembering a time
she had seen anything so bright.
A time when there was hope in her heart

Till the end of her senior year
she burned with passion,
Passing each class by the skin of her teeth.
But the girl could've cared less.
she didn't strive for a college degree,
her true love was poetry.

The day after graduation,
she filled her bag to the brim
with notebooks and pencils.
The thought of packing
anything else made her shiver,
for she didn't need any more burdens
than the ones she already carried.

And the jacket that knew her sorrows?
She shed that that soggy old thing,
like a butterfly does with a cocoon,
and abandoned it there on her bed
next to her nightstand where framed pictures
of a younger stranger
smiled up at her,
a painted-on smile that slipped the second
the photographer had captured the shot.
Then the girl had had a closed heart,
but as she walked out of her parent's house that day
It was open.

She marched straight to the bench for the bus
And boarded it to the last stop
until she saw a glowing building burning
as bright as the blazing inferno
that was now her candle.
She entered the scene inside,
her heart on the outside of her chest.
But just as the girl was starting to gain her confidence,
she suddenly grew nervous
as she waded through the sea of smiling faces
That parted for her like the Red Sea.

She climbed the steps up onto the stage,
the words caught inside her throat.
goosebumps broke out on her skin,
missing the warmth of the jacket
she had left behind with her old life.

The breath of the crowd nearly blew out her candle.
The blow caused the girl to shrink inside of herself
like a turtle inside its shell.
What if these people laughed her offstage?
But most importantly, she worried,
What if they didn't understand her?

But she smoothed her goosebumps flat
and grabbed the mic in front of her face.
Her eyes traced to the back window,
letting space and time float away
the same as she used to in class.

Her hope grew so much in that moment,
the fire so hot and so big
her candle shattered,
her hope outgrowing the small space
that used to be her prison.
It was the only sound to fill the silence

Until she began

She began with words of grief and sorrow.
Of hope for tomorrow.
And though she hadn't spoken her words aloud in years,
her voice rose and floated down like snowflakes onto the crowd,
her proses making them shiver
and cling to each other for warmth.
And at the end of her final stanza,
she saw them nodding as one in acknowledgment.
In understanding.
The girl who spoke in poems
who used to believe that words only existed to chain her down
believed in that moment, as the crowd roared,
that words can set you free.