This was my first peice of poetry that I was going to read to all of the people who were important to me in life in a poetry reading being held downtown. Sitting there with this poem and the other poets, who were all separated by the large audience, I began to feel more and more nervous than I thought possible. By the time they called my name and motioned me to the stand, I was literarly beginning to hyperventilate with fear. It wasn't my first reading I had read at, but it was by far the most important. All of my teachers, family, and a few friends were there, not to mention a good part of the town I'm from. But when I got up there and began reading, all that fear began to diminish. At the end of it, with everyone applauding me, I realized that I was wrong; I wasn't written in pen, when it came to writing and having courage, I was the pen.