The Poetess

The first time she felt it happen it was with fire.

She was writing in her notebook, and she put down words.

Feelings more like it.

She wrote about passion, and the anger she felt. It was warm and red, and hot. She dotted the page with words to give shape to her thoughts, and when she was done, the carpet in front of her was smoldering.

Her parents thought it was strange, and reasoned that she was playing with matches and lighters. How else could a child light fire to her room?

She was, however, left with her book and her pen. And again she turned to her writing. A word here, another there, growing into a stanza, sometimes rhyming, sometimes not.

She put her soul into it, just as before, and suddenly the bedroom door was no longer there.

That was harder to explain.

Her parents were mad again, but also mystified.

The girl learned that it would be best to keep this little talent to herself.

Especially after the incident across the street. The couple that lived there were always mean to her. One night she saw a candle glowing in the window. She watched it and scribbled something. Minutes later firetrucks were rushing to the blaze.

That got far too much attention.

Though, this didn’t mean that when she could dabble in it when alone. So she filled her small notebook and things would happen. Each poem could contain a small amount of the chaos inside her.

And so she wrote and wrote.

And wrote.

Sometimes the poems would conjure large things, like rain. And other times it would be small. Like a tiny ball of light to keep writing at night.

The poems would keep the dark thoughts at bay. The thoughts about what might happen if she wrote the wrong sort of poem. Writing about things she dare not speak aloud.

But the thoughts escaped from time to time.

She melted the tires on her father’s car once.

And she made her mother’s phone disappear more often than it should.

But those didn’t touch the other poems. The ones she kept hidden.

And that’s how she went through middle school, and high school. She thought it best to avoid writing, lest her be forced to write a poem and make it come to life.

She kept it in control.

And she kept writing.

And writing.

Until college, she was a woman now, and each year was drawn more and more to writing classes.

Finally, she took one.

A poetry class.

Of course, the first assignment was to compose a poem to be read aloud in front of the others.

So she wrote a poem, trying not to imbue it with the energy she felt. But it still carried a piece of her soul, as all poems do.

Finally, it was her turn.

She read, and when she was done something happened.

They laughed.

A cruel laugh that can only come from one’s peers. There were remarks about the amateurish nature of the composition, about its form, and meter. She wanted to leave the room. She wanted to leave school.

She wanted…

To read a different poem.

She flipped open her notebook and that’s exactly what she did. She read the poem and let the white hot rage fill her voice.

And afterward there were only smoldering spots where there were once students.

She might have not been charged had the professor not witnessed it. She was sent to a very different place after that.

She thought it would be jail, but an organization reached out and offered her a spot at another type of school.

She sat in front of an old man with a long beard.

“You…arrange words well,” was all he said.

“I know,” she answered.

“Would you like to keep doing it?”

“Yes.”

“Well then, come with me. We have much to show you.”