I wrote my first poem to a dead worm. My friends and I had cut it in half at recess at St. Maurice school in grade one. This was after our first science class that day. I felt bad for the worm and buried its still wriggling body with a stone acting as a tombstone on top. In my diary that day is this:
“Dear worm/we cut you/I am blue/The end. Do you like this poem? Yes or No. by Jackie”
Since then, there have been more blunders and more experiments in my own brain that I have never stopped writing it all down. Words never leave me, even when I put them away they always seem to come back. I live vicariously through them in the books I read and the things I write. If my mind ever fades me, and one day it very well might, I will have a way to still communicate with my children and my loved ones. If this endeavor does anything or not, I will have that line available and that is all I can ask of the word.
“Think you’re escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.” – James Joyce
jacqueline valencia 