✏️ Why I Won't Stop Writing

a place where i can write whatever i want
however i want … — / -… . / .. -
prose, poetry, lyrics, sound, run-on sentences all around
iambic 无数meter—你管不着

when i was a kid
i got tired of being
so hyperaware of my own voice
and how it affected my audience

u wanna be a scholar
don’t use passive voice
no i’s or we’s or but’s
though in the end it’s your voice

Times New Roman
12 pt font
1-inch margins
MLA citations

thesis arguable
topic sentences debatable
u wanna survive as a writer
then conform to these rules

yeah, perhaps ur right
but i think at one pt we all need to
stop the bullshit
of pretending like we’re not human

like u don’t feel things like any other individual
like u don’t wanna break out of that boring-ass font
like u don’t wanna submit this paper even though it’s under the page limit
like u don’t feel deprived of ur artistic freedom

like the institution cares about u
like u gotta make every sentence what they wanna hear
what do they wanna hear? tell me
is anything rly objective nowadays

because u see, ms. smith,
discipline is one thing
yet freedom of expression is another

bell hooks never capitalized her name
audre lorde never capitalized america
tell me, where are those grammatical rules
you clung onto so dearly all along?

i don’t care if u gave the rest of the class m&ms
and not me because i skipped a step on the stairs or two
i don’t care if i didn’t indent on my state-wide english exam
because ur words were misconstrued

i used to care
but now i don’t
what changed, u might ask
well ms. smith, lemme tell u smth

i learned to read
i learned to write
i learned that in the end
nobody’s right

i wish more educators recognized
how precious a child’s mind can be
instead of plunging us into the facade of adulthood
cuz that’s all we’re taught to achieve

this is my world
a world long overdue
i’ll caress it, scribble on it, shred it up
and u can’t tell me what to do