As a fourth-grader who had just lost her best friend to cancer, I found that my mind had become clouded with a million different thoughts and emotions. I became angry and confused at how someone I loved could be taken away from me. Slowly, I started to redirect those emotions into journaling and poetry. I found peace and comfort in the words I was writing, even though they didn’t make any sense to anyone on the outside. I began to seek refugee in spoken word videos I had seen on YouTube while imagining myself performing on stage like them. These seemingly simple words on a page became underlying messages filled with empowerment and calls of action.
To this day, “Somewhere in America” by Belissa Escoloedo, Zariya Allen, and Rhiannon McGavin of the Los Angeles Team is my favorite spoken word poem. It was delivered by three young girls—just like me at the time I first saw it. They tackled issues of the education system, and how the lessons we learned weren’t ones that could be found in textbooks. It’s the sad truth, but we are too prideful to say it out loud. Out of sight and out of mind isn’t the mentality we should hold, at any time.
The versatility of poetry made me fall in love with it even more. To me, it became a messenger for the issues of the world. In my senior year of high school, my English teacher gave our class an assignment: write a poem. At this time, I was researching information about same-sex adoption. I was looking into stories of those who wanted to adopt but couldn’t because of who they chose to love. This was the catalyst for the poem I wrote that day, titled “Closed.”
You didn’t want me, but they did
They couldn’t have me because of the love they chose to share
And the lifestyle they chose to live
You didn’t want me, but they did
They couldn’t have me because of the unwelcome stares
Of those too ignorant to truly understand
You didn’t want me, but they did
They couldn’t have me because the freedoms you speak of didn’t apply to them
Why is that?
Somewhere in the world, a child is placed in a selective system
A system that houses tons but only releases a few
We’re lions in a cage, trapped in our own thoughts
The breeze waves hello and sometimes it lingers
The only company we have
You didn’t want them, but we did
We couldn’t have them because of our colorful flag
That made you uncomfortable
Rainbows are adored in the sky, but they aren’t welcomed in homes
Wanting a child of our own to care and to hold
With everything in our bones
You didn’t want them, but we did
Our only crime wasn’t our inability to care,
But because of who we are
Whether you’re reading it, hearing it or writing it, the power of poetry is unmatched and universal—consumable in many different forms, while reaching the minds and touching the hearts of those who stumble upon it.