when I was five years old,
I learned how to read
and I learned how to write.
I took my a's, and my b's
and my most favorite of all
K's
and I made my name.
I liked the way it looked
on the page.
when I was seven years old,
I learned how to pretend.
I was a teacher, a doctor, a mother
a friend.
I liked the way it felt
to imagine.
I was a balloon that had just been let go of,
nobody knew
where I would end up.
Somewhere in space,
where the stars danced
and they would whisper their secrets,
or maybe just close enough
to the brilliance of the sun,
hoping it's smile would tell me.
A lost girl
in this big, wide world.
when I was ten years old,
I learned how to dream.
I saw the beauty in the small things.
my mother's smile in the morning
over her cup of coffee,
the crimson red of the rose I got
after my dance recital,
the big A on my paper,
and I still remember when
my favorite teacher told me
that I was gonna be somebody someday.
when I was eighteen years old,
I learned how to love.
I let it have me,
all of me.
Love swallowed me up
and embraced me
in it's warm arms
that wouldn't let me go.
It was sunsets,
starry nights,
the smell of turning
a new book's pages,
the fourth of July,
it was a love for the ages.
When I was eighteen years old,
I learned how to break.
the earth crumbled
in the shaking palm of the hand
he used to hold.
and the air that continued to fill
the empty spaces of my lungs
felt like knives.
When I was eighteen years old,
I learned how to heal.
I learned how to hold the threads of my heart
and I took those pins
and I pulled,
and I mended,
and I weaved,
every day,
until I was okay
again.
When I was eighteen years old,
love found me again.
Hiding behind the big old oak tree
were the carvings I used to make.
There was a "K"
barely distinguishable,
and fading,
it's presence showed me that it wasn't leaving.
No matter how many times
I had collapsed upon
it's underbrush
and fell apart.
So then,
I drew an "R" beside it,
and it looked like an old friend.
I am still only eighteen years old.
I have learned how to read,
to write,
to laugh,
to cry,
how to care,
how to dream,
how to love,
and how to break.
But there is still one thing
I never learned.
and that is okay.
I might never know
what it really, truly is.
I find pieces of it
in my mother's smile
the smell of a new book's pages,
the fourth of July,
when he says "I love you"
the click-clicking of the keys
as I write this to you.
From the bottom of my heart,
I hope you find
pieces of yours too.
