It was a poem called

Scraps of aged paper cover my legs and toes like sand. I heave with frustration and disappointment. I know I won't find it.

I saved it. I hoard all the important things. All the minute things. All that is made to be forgotten. The passing, fleeting things. It's here. I know it is.

I seal my eyes with Flex Super Glue and drift into the memories locked inside. I see 13 year old me, in what is still called the "little room" of our house. It's late, the clock in the room doesn't work but I know it's late. There's the poem on loose leaf, in the child's hands. Wrong words crossed out for right ones. Blue ink. Three lines per stanza. I can't see how many stanzas. Teen Jada is hopping around, rereading it, hyping herself up. She's performing it to a room full of no one but I know she sees a crowd. Her cheeks start to ache because her smile has been extended since she fell into the cadence of the poem. She hits my knee on her Bratz tv. She races to our mother and reads it her. She's proud, my mom is always proud. Teen Jada is way more proud now because... validation.

I don't think she's clued in that it is the first thing she's written for herself. She feels the difference coursing through her but she can't categorize it. This poem is not a speech for a moving up ceremony or graduation. Not an exquisitely crafted, well procrastinated book report. Procrastinated solely for the purpose of finding the right creative angle, not at all because of a deeper rooted problem. Not for a presentation, or a reimagining of someone else's work. "This morning" is a piece that she had to release from her own canon. A thought in her mind, traveling on the back of a feeling. The poem that broke through, so all the other poems could make it to paper.

My eyes roam under closed lids.

I see 19 year old year old me. She's in the larger room of our home on the other side of the wall of the "little room." She hasn't written a poem in awhile. She is choking on the lack of words coming out of her.

I dart out of that room to find young adult Jada on the set of her short film, where she designed a shrine to the poetry she wrote in her early teen years. She's there in the main space of Reel Works that has been transformed into the bedroom of her main character. She is looking at the wall of who she used to be and what she used to be able to do. Her eyes land on the poem. The first poem. She doesn't read it.

I slice the strip of Flex Super Glue concealing me from my present reality. I see what 28 year old me, in her apartment on the 3rd floor of that same house is seeing. The poem is there, not on the original paper. I had rewritten it, neater some years back. I tripped so hard and far down the lane of memories that I pulled out clumps of hair. I am currently lying on my living room floor at 3:26 a.m., remembering I have to work today and questioning if "This morning" was the first one. Have I relied on an altered vision from a *Precog for my poet origin story? Did I falsify the evidence to suit the prompt? Am I the unreliable narrator we all side eye? Am I really so unsure of myself at this time in my life that I shouldn't trust my own memories?

I don't know.

I am not going to give a dissertation on the mediocre, cliche poem of a child. It's at the center of the artwork for this piece and I'll leave a clearer photo once I bring this to a close. Read it if you must.

Ok...

It's not horrible. It is corny but the last line still makes me smile. "This morning" was the beginning of me trying to develop a book of poetry, off and on for over 15 years. It was the catalyst to me having a voice. This poem was the inauguration to my becoming. The thing that spawned the flood I love to wade in.

Yes, we are going to sit back, cross our legs, sip some ginger tea and believe the narrator. She really needs it.

*Minority Report reference. Classic Film. Watch it.