I became interested in music
while in elementary school
after learning about Billie Holiday.
How Holiday needed music, needed t o create –
that’s what I wanted in my life, too.
But my family was too poor
to get me guitar lessons,
so I didn't know what to do
with the creativity boiling over inside me.
At some point, I started writing
and I have never stopped.
It has never not helped me with
that seemingly ubiquitous life-given
stress and tension;
it is my connection to the pseudo-universe.
From music to borrowed muses,
the memory of me
will be creativity
that I am unable to turn off.
Everything else is scaffolding
to the beacon of that endeavor.