A Poets Tale
Steve traced the rim of his lukewarm coffee, the steam long gone. He was staring out at the rain-slicked streets of his neighbourhood, a familiar mix of contentment and bewilderment swirling within him. For forty-two years, poetry had been his quiet companion, a solace whispered into notebooks and tapped out on old, clunky keyboards. It was a language he spoke fluently to himself, but one he never dared imagine would be understood, let alone valued, by the wider world. He remembered being a child, hiding in the dusty attic, light filtering through cracks in the wooden boards, writing odes to dandelions and sonnets to the shadows. He wrote through awkward adolescence, through the heartache of first loves and the confusion of early adulthood. He wrote while working dead-end jobs, the lyrical cadence of his words a counterpoint to the monotony of his days. He never sought fame or fortune, only the catharsis of putting pen to paper, of giving shape to the formless emotions churning inside....