Lately, I've seen poems trending about how no one should fall in love with a poet, nor should they make a poet helplessly fall in love with them. However, something no one has mentioned yet is what occurs too often: stealing from a poet.

When a poet writes a poem, that poem is the perfect combination of metaphors and imagery created by them for you -- a compilation so beautifully intricate that you can get lost by reading merely a few words, overtaken by an empathetic tide that you did not think would come to the corners of your eyes when you sat down and opened your book or tab or paper.

This is the beauty of poems; they express words that many cannot say in any other variation of any way. Ask a poet to describe their emotions and they will beg you for paper and pen, a computer and a keyboard. And these poems eventually combine to become a part of the poet.

The poems a poet writes become a part of themselves.

That being said, it is not okay to take away from a poet what is rightfully theirs. You do not steal from a poet because you are searching for an idea, or because you would like to go trending. Stealing is not poetry. Stealing is not beautiful.

We are a community of people with a love more affable for poetry than for ourselves, and we should all respect all the pieces, because if we do then we are accepting and respecting each other.

So I ask you from the bottom of my heart, do not steal from a poet any longer if you have, or at all if you have not. Your pieces are your own raw emotions, not mine. My pieces are my own raw emotions, not yours.