this is going to be a sad poem. i know this as i write it, as the sadness seeps through my skin and onto the page until it is soaked. it is heavy with the sorrow of a million strangers. another sad poem.
poets know a thing or two about sadness. in seventh grade english class, my teacher gave us our poetry lesson on valentine's day, said it wasn't on purpose but that's just how the lesson plans worked out. he told us that all the best poets were depressed and that most of them did not even want to be writers but just wanted to be free. he said, there's nothing to write about if you're happy. he said, but i'm not a poet.
everyone told me that poetry was another word for depression, that writing in my journal was crying in school bathrooms. poetry is for sad people because sadness seems to be the heaviest emotion, which is why it slumps your shoulders down and makes you sleep too much. you can feel the heavy when you hold any book filled with poems. feel the sadness between the pages.
words don't always make me sad, though, not the sadness that all the writers write about. anger isn't heavy enough. happiness isn't heavy enough. maybe i'm just not heavy enough.
maybe i'm just a bad poet. maybe i'm not a sad enough poet. maybe i've been writing the wrong way for all these years and a teacher will come and fix me the way you correct a child that's holding a pencil incorrectly. maybe.
i think this was a sad poem. maybe i'm on to something.