Your First Poem Already Exists

Paint kisses poetry

You are already fluent
in something no dictionary holds
I tell you this: you are a translator
of empty coffee cups,
of lights left on in vacant houses.

You speak the grammar of doors
that stick in summer,
of keys that turn twice
before they catch.

You are writing already
in the alphabet of waiting rooms,
in the syntax of missed calls.

I know you think poetry lives
in books with gold spines
but you are wrong.

You breathe in iambic pentameter
when you count the stairs at night.

Your lungs expand in free verse
with every gasp before speaking up.

You are a scholar of unfinished sentences,
of conversations that end
with someone walking away.

You have memorized the meter
of disappointment,
the caesura of almost.

Listen: every scar you carry
is already a stanza.

Every time you said nothing
when you meant everything
that was a poem.

The space between wanting and having,
between reaching and holding
you live there.

You are native to that country.

You think you need permission
to call yourself a poet
but you have been writing
since the first time you lied
to protect someone you loved.

Your first poem?

It's the one you're living right now.