The First Poem

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There were no words for all that lay within
till, suddenly, there were all the words,
coming in a torrent like an unblocked river,
or trickling in small eddies 
into the far corners of her heart.

Her dad had died that summer
she turned fourteen.
And there began
a Great Unsilencing.

This is written for Magaly Guerrero's prompt at Real Toads for Day 1 of NaPoWriMo: What sparked your poetic heart? She wants us to write about the poem that began or inspired our poetic journey. In my case, when I was fourteen, sitting in school, suddenly the lines of a poem began to float through my head. I quickly wrote them down, creating my first poem. It came from I know not where, as I had not been exposed to poetry at home, though I read everything I could get my hands on in fiction. But after that, I continued to write poems for the rest of my life.