Moon Made

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that's what most said.

I didn't get it then, not really. but I do now.

the poem I write doesn't have to be good.

it just has to be mine.

when I was young and we lived on the outskirts of town, I thought the forest was like something out of an old book. there were no stories written about this place, nothing from the past or the present to show us how it looked. the only stories were from those who came before us; people who came and went, people whose voices had faded. we lived in our house by ourselves and saw little of anyone else, living as though time hadn't touched our lives. but they had. so had everything around us. our world had changed over time: the trees, the animals, the soil, the air. some things changed slowly—we could see it and feel it happening. others changed more quickly. one day, you were there and the next, you weren't. and it made me think about why they'd gone and where they might be going, what their lives must look like without us. did they miss us? I wondered that. did they think about us at all? or were they so busy, moving forward, that they forgot they even existed once?

we were never here long enough to know.

one day, we'd leave, and go.

I knew that too.

so I wrote poetry. After all these years, it's the best thing I can do.

that's how it all started.

I wrote poems when I was young. I wrote them for myself and no one else.

I didn't want anyone to read them. I wanted them to stay hidden inside my head, safe from anyone else.

I needed something to do with my hands and my mind, and writing poems was the best way I knew how. I took the poems with me. I hid them in a box under my bed. I never showed anyone.

not then. not ever.

the poems I write now are different from the ones I used to write. I'm older, I've lived more, I have more to say. I don't want to hide anymore. I want someone to see what I do and understand it. I want someone to tell me if it's good or bad. I want to be able to show my poems to people and hear their thoughts on them. I want to know what they think. I want to be heard.

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