Somebody once told me
no matter what you say -
if you believe it to be true -
speak it with volume
My junior year of high school
I interned for a week
teaching English to middle schoolers
they were working on the creative writing unit
classrooms covered in posters which read things like
no tears in the writer, no tears in the reader
and other good inspirational stuff
some of the kids wrote poems
others wrote short stories
others wrote I don’t know whats
but they all told a story which to them
was an essential truth of life
just waiting to be heard
and when they got up
to share in front of the class
from the shy girl in the soccer shoes
to the tall joker
they all spoke with volume
because some things
are impossible to ignore