My First Poem

All of my poems were in that storage unit. I remember my first poem that I wrote in first grade. We were assigned a topic – water. My teacher encouraged us to call out words associated with water and she wrote them on the board. Then she made a poem with them. She told us, “And that’s how you write a poem. You just put the words together.”

The class scribbled away. But I was stuck. No, not my first writers block, it was different. I didn’t want to use the words on the board. I wanted to use my own words. With the teacher’s permission, I did.

Here’s my first ever poem:

Water

Water dripping
Water dropping
Water swirls
And water twirls
Water is beautiful
Water is powerful
Water is fun

I still have the memory. I still know the words. Why do I wish I still had the fancy paper with tick lines made with my ruler and great big eraser marks?