My First Poem

Regret

More simple, my thoughts.

I remember, I reach out
with my mind, my heart
and find nothing
but more memory.

I hesitate, I wonder
where you are, will be
and remember,
sadly, both;

For you are not with me,
I know,
For you will be elsewhere
soon enough,

And I regret.

Context

I share this mainly because it was one of the weirdest moments of my life. Before it, I always thought very little of poetry — perhaps it sounds nice, but what else is there to it? Can't you always do better with more words, paragraphs, etc.? Then this happened. And there's no better way to describe it. I sat down to write my thoughts, and every time I tried to think of words in my normal prose style, it wasn't right. When words finally hit the keyboard, they seemed so strange to me, I felt the need to start with an explanation: "More simple, my thoughts."

My favorite part about the whole experience was that it "just happened" to such a degree that I didn't even realize I was writing poetry during the process. Only after the last stroke landed did I exhale, slowly blink my eyes, and recognize the words before me as a poem. And since I still despised poetry to some extent, I experienced some serious cognitive dissonance in that moment. My lesson: lighten up, express yourself.

More Context

Way back when I was dating the first girlfriend I fell in love with, I was living in a dorm at the University of North Texas while I was in still high school, (c/o the Texas Academy of Math and Science) which had some downsides. The program only lasted two years, and despite knowing each other the whole time, she and I only became a thing the last month or so. There was a curfew, at which the dorm doors were locked, and genders were split between floors with only certain hours of visitation. We needed more contact than we were allowed, and writing became a strong secondary form of closeness.

This particular writing happened when I decided not to go to an event she was going to, for what I thought was a good reason at the time. Once I was stuck in the dorm and she wasn't, with no text ability, it hit me how little I wanted to do anything in my room in comparison to having the extra real time with her. So I wrote.