What made the difference

 Before my senior year of high school, I thought poetry beyond my reach.

I mean, I’ve always loved writing. Short stories, funny anecdotes, sassy essays for standardized exams, all of that. But poetry felt weird. Like its own separate universe that’s somehow nebulous and very, very structured all at once. It always seemed to me like you had to either be really philosophical or really rhyme-oriented in order to write good poetry, or any at all.

Then I did a study of Billy Collins’ work for my AP Literature class, and that was it for me. I knew I could never be as subtle, as observant, as unaffectedly witty as him (for real, he’s a word angel. Read his poem On Turning Ten and it’ll change your life).

But I enrolled in a creative writing class second semester anyway, because I started thinking, maybe I could do my own thing.

 

But 

I had this really cool creative writing teacher

and she got up in front of the class

every single day

with an arsenal of puns

and way too much pep,

and she made us write poems.

And you couldn’t complain,

because she’d just fire right back

with a confetti canon of sparkles and positivity.

 

Our classroom was basically

a glorified cave,

all cinder blocks and no windows

but who needs windows

when you have a dwarf star for a teacher?