The Power of Words

I have been thinking today about the power of words.

When I was a kid one word from my mother could break my heart or send me soaring like a bird through the sky.

When I was older I struggled to find the words that would make me seem more normal and less like an outcast with the other kids.

When I was very little I loved when my grandmother read to me. I knew that if I could unlock the secrets behind each strange symbol on the page then I could sen myself on a thousand journeys.

And once I did, once reading finally clicked for me, no one could stop me.

I remember browsing amongst the stacks with my grandmother on Sundays. We would whisper in hushed voices about which books I would borrow. I could never pick just one and would often return home laden down with 5, 6, or 7 different books. I would finish them in the week and return them the next Sunday. I could never get enough of the words.

And when I found poetry I knew that I had found the most profound, truthful, and beautiful words ever written in the English language.

No one can catch the fluttering of your heart when you first fall in love, or the sound of the waves hitting the ocean shore quite like a poet can.

I miss poetry.

It was a huge part of my being in high school and later in the beginning years of college. But as time has gone on I have lost poetry.

I have lost all of my writer self.

I can only hope that somewhere in these words that I jot down every day that I can find it again. I hope that somehow if I write enough words, I will resurrect a part of myself that has been buried under graded papers, late nights, and an exhaustion so deep that I feel it in my bones.

I hope that I have not lost the poetry and the stories within me forever.