I burned every poem I wrote in high school.
Not because they were bad—because they were too honest. Too revealing. You see, I was the outsider everywhere — at home, at school, in my own skin. Bullied for being quiet, for being soft, for not performing masculinity the way other boys did.
Writing poetry became my private revolution.
In those stolen moments with pen and paper, I could finally tell the truth. Then I’d burn the evidence before anyone found it. Below are a few lines that survived — fragments I couldn’t bring myself to destroy, hidden away for decades. They’re rough, teenage attempts at making sense of a world that had no place for me.
Reading them now, I see something I couldn’t see then: a voice that refused to be completely silenced, even when I was doing everything I could to erase it.
