When people ask me why I decided to be a poet, I can't explain to them how I feel energy. How when I look in someone's eyes, I see heaviness, I see regret. I can't tell them that when I look at the sky, I see my ancestors shining. That I talk to my unborn children and tell them of all the great things they will do when their souls choose their bodies. When people ask me why I decided to be a poet, I can't tell them that when I'm not speaking, I'm dying and my body feels pain when I'm not writing. That for this empath, emotion is too strong to not be shared, that it rots when it stays within me. That when I speak, a new life is birthed. That each poem is a gift to the sky. To each ancestor and to each descendant. So I tell them, I didn't choose to be a poet, it chose me.