Finding My Voice

 

Finding My Voice

Deep down in my soul
Feelings, thoughts, stories, ideas
Mine, all mine
Unique to me
Have they always been there?
Probably

Years went by
They stayed deep down
Locked away?
At least on a shelf high up
Where no one could reach them
Nor hear them
Not being shared
For sure not verbalized

Would I always be separated?
At a distance
Yelling deep within a forest
With no one around to hear

But the iceberg started melting
All by reading Black Beauty to my love
At bedtime
1982

Ten years later
Speaking in front of my church
Outside in a park
I spoke of being my brother’s keeper

Some twenty years after that
I read a piece of writing out loud
In front of people I did not know
Bright lights in my eyes
I spoke
Slowly
With cadence
A piece titled "Hold Onto Hope".

Yes

I had found my voice
Completely