I wrote my first poem when I was 13. I lived on an island that year and was in a split 7th/8th grade class. Total number of students in my grade: 11. And that was one of the biggest classes.

Anyway, my teacher required us to keep a journal, but we could write whatever we wanted in it as long as we wrote every day. I wrote a very long, rambling, inarticulate poem about “something,” some kind of vicious beast, chasing the speaker during the night. Therapists will say it was gay desire. My teacher didn’t comment much on it (she read them every day). It was notable primarily for its generous use of capitalized words and line breaks, which allowed for a maximum of two words on each line (but frequently only one).

I still have it. I’ve written every since, with the exception of the two years between undergrad and grad.