How depressed I was at sixteen.
I let things happen to me,
then wrote down where they hurt the most.
Misery I could always count on.
It was my companion.
Unlike boys my own age,
it encouraged me to take up a pen and write.
I was a showplace for sickness and dejection.
I showed no signs of ending my life
but I was well versed in suicide’s vocabulary.
I was too young to drink
and too old to despise the opposite sex.
My sports came up short
so I was reduced to doing well in academics.
And I wrote…poetry…
on scraps of paper.
Camouflage was unnecessary.
Prying eyes never bothered.
At eighteen,
I started going to readings.
How dourly they shared their work.
How wretched were their lines.
I was surprised to discover
that there was a lot of me going around.