I was a weird kid.
Nothing reminds me of this more than stumbling across scraps of old writing. I’m the girl who detailed an entire map and convinced her best friend there was treasure buried in the backyard – guarded by trolls and a dragon’s beating heart. The girl whose diaries were filled with letters to her favourite characters rather than secrets and boys (that came later). The girl who turned down play dates and parties so she could finish that next chapter instead.
It’s amazing how much old writing there is to stumble upon. Pages and pages of loose leaf, notebook after notebook, computer files and journals and secret notes.
I kept it all.
Yesterday was one of those stumbling days. Looking for an unused notebook, I dusted off the plastic tote that serves as my writing crypt and was immediately drawn off course. Sitting on top, the giant pink notebook courtesy of my university creative writing course – there’s half a novel jammed into those pages. Nestled below, an envelope housing magazine cut outs, google print offs, and the first novella I ever wrote (spoiler, there are a lot of unicorns. And sparkly dresses). Fan fiction letters between myself and Fred Weasley, Sirius Black, and Remus Lupin. A floppy disk, SUPER IMPORTANT scrawled across its front tag (that story’s lost forever).
Finally, a small, unassuming address book with sunflowers on its cover. An address book, because no one’s going to snoop through an address book. We weren’t allowed diaries that locked in my house, so this was as secure as it got.
This was where my poetry lived.
You want to relive fourteen-year-old heartbreak? Read that fourteen-year-old’s valiant attempts at poetry.
You do want to read it, don’t you? Of course you do. It’s GOLD.
Your voice haunts me in the deep recesses of the night,
My fears become real in this absence of light,
Shadows devour me as I plunge far from grace,
Lost deep in sorrow, awaiting my fate.
And maybe a little angst-filled …
Light shrinks from me, grim countenance of youth,
Mind denies all, shielded from truth,
You’re my dark angel, black wings block the sun,
Hell awaits judgement, knowing I am the one.
Grim countenance of youth?
Scars of sins passed lay heavy on my soul,
Your heart torn open, never to be whole,
Your body betrayed with the touch of my lips,
A temptation yielded, devil’s first kiss.
Aaaaand that’s where we’re going to end it.
There are another two pages. It gets dark. Real dark. And a little racy, if we’re being honest.
I was a weird kid. And weird kids grow up to be weird adults, and weird adults write equally bad poetry.
And you know what?
The world could use a little more bad poetry, and a lot more weird kids.
