The sign outside says Burlap and Bean. I am newly 18 and with my mom. We got there half an hour early on a Wednesday and there was already a line to sign up. I barely make the cut,

Last slot.

I am nervous and there is also hot chocolate in my hands. I watch as singer-songwriters take the stage acoustically. I realize that most people who read OPEN MIC do not think, “Spoken Word.” I decide not to leave despite the embarrassment that comes from being the only Sneetch without a Star Belly (I revert back to childhood book references when I am nervous).

It is nearly the end of the night. The poem is pulled up on my iPhone notes app. The emcee introduces me as “headliner” to be nice.

I introduce the poem. “Beauty Math.” It is my first time performing.

“Hello. I am a girl

By the world’s definition that means I am not smart enough to do math and I constantly obsess about how I look…”

~~~

Although I am the reader of the four siblings, it is Nats who introduces me to Spoken Word. 

She calls me into her tiny room to lay on her bed that is large—there are only two inches between the frame and the wall. I crawl over the end, hitting my shin on the false white wood and stomach-shimmy so that we lay parallel to each other. Her torso is longer than mine and my legs are longer than hers. It evens out to an inch difference. I lay at five foot two.

She hits play on her laptop and

Aman Batra - "I Don't Have An Anxiety Problem" | All Def Poetry x Da Poetry Lounge | All Def Poetry Apr 6, 2017

begins. 

“The day I met him, I arrived to the party early…”

We watch it three times. We start yelling lines at each other, road-trip-sing-along-heartbreak-poetry.

“I became a soundproof room in a matter of minutes.”

“To this day I am his best kept secret.”

“I don’t have an anxiety problem, I have a loving-people-who-don’t-love-me-back problem, and that causes anxiety.”

“I don’t know much about love. I don’t know much about breathing either, but I do it, effortlessly, like I would die without it!”

Do these sound the same if you can only see them? I still hear them in my head. I have forgotten almost every poem I’ve memorized for school.

Can you hear it?

~~~

It is March 23, 2018. Villa Maria Academy High School for Girls auditorium. There are boys here, some of them for me. 

I have half-learned my lesson. Open mics are not for poetry, so I sign up twice. I sing a ballad from a musical first, getting into their good graces. Later, I return to the stage with a poem. This is my third time performing.

The second was again at that same coffee shop. I suppose my reappearance said a lot about me. Lack of fear. Love of craft. Lack of self-awareness.

That poem was entitled “Spinsters.” My mom did not understand that one but she went with me anyway and filmed. I think I have lost the video, but I remember I was in a blue-green-grey men’s flannel.

“No one is immune;

We all fall into spinsterhood.

I’m talking to the high power CEO who missed his son’s first home run to take a phone call,

He is a spinster to the moment he lost.”

Maybe the idea was too heady for 18.

But for performance number three, I am comic and self-deprecating and have never had my first kiss. “Queen of the Friend Zone.”

“This is where I live, my address is 1 Main Street in the friend zone,

And as time passes the population slowly grows;

I add more and more boys to the census each year.

Yet as the list lengthens I find myself continually alone.”

They laugh. Thank God.

~~~

I am home on winter break from my first year of college, Nats her last. Will and Luke bookend us educationally and also do not care about Olivia Gatwood. I got to see her live. Nats was not home and could not go with me. But a new poem dropped. I crawl into her bed.

Once we start we cannot stop, replaying all the favorite hits: “Ode to the Women on Long Island,” “Directives,” “At the Owl,” “Alternate Universe in Which I Am Unfazed by the Men Who Do Not Love Me,” “Ode to My Bitch Face,” “The Scholar.” 

“all of the women scale the fire escape / perch on the rust / cackle and sing / you can tell how much he loves her / by how he sleeps / not at all / not at all / not at all”

Can you hear it?

~~~

Maybe I never learn. Maybe the room is too big. Maybe the room is too empty. Maybe I have supplemented that place where shame was absent. Maybe I am in college and I have become self-aware. Maybe ignorance is bliss.

Aside from maybes, I am standing on a stage in a room not particularly full of people, and I am reading a poem about scabs. “My Skin.” 

“My skin is raw and red.

I have just finished picking and peeling away the scab that protected it;

I cannot stand the feeling of having more of myself layered on top of me.

Or perhaps I enjoy the feeling of ripping it away,”

I can see every face and am aware that they did not come here for scabs. I massacre the poem as it’s fighting out of my mouth, voice quivering, cutting lines, changing diction.

I leave and sob. I hate myself. I will never perform again.

~~~

I am dramatic. I am also aware. I choose my poems more carefully. Palatable. Love poems. “My First Real Love Poem.”

“I am afraid to write a poem about you

Because I’ve never experienced something like this before.

Reciprocation…

I want the first poem I write about you to do you justice.”

We break up eventually. He is still wonderful. I hope I did him justice.

~~~

My mom is my favorite audience. I call her.

“I just wrote something and I really want to read it to you. Do you have a few minutes?”

It takes hours. She is so willing to analyze with me. To listen.

“I had forgotten what this was like.

I thought I had lost this schoolgirl head over

Heels feeling that

Stretches my lips and steals my reason

Crush.”

I always used to deny the boys I liked. It is easier to tell her things like this.

~~~

One of my love poems from high school wins a prize in college. I get to do a reading. My hands shake as I hold the paper, one of dozens that someone in charge printed out. “Holden & Your Hair.”

“My manuscript a stream of consciousness that circles around you.

I don’t wonder where the ducks go in the winter but where your mind goes when you sleep,

I lay atop your head, nestled in like it’s a down comforter

But I can’t sleep as I think of you

So I let my presence sink through your hair hoping you’ll dream of me.

How jealous I am of his red hunting hat,”

They tell me they loved it before on paper, but it is so different, so much more powerful for them when I read it out loud. It was written as Spoken Word. It was meant to be heard.

Tell me. Can you hear me?

February 2022