1. I began to write at around the age of ten. The words flowed from me in the margins of textbooks and on scraps of paper lying on the kitchen table, next to the scribbled doodles of flowers and dogs. Throughout high school, I started and stopped four fiction novels, never quite finding an idea to which I could fully commit. I began to hone my craft at university, and that is when I discovered poetry as a medium.

2. Whatever I needed at the time, the words have been faithful friends in providing it. When I was young, they helped me craft elaborate worlds in which to lose myself. Now, they are helping me find myself by expressing my thoughts, my experiences. Writing has become my saving grace. It is the one place that I'm allowed to bleed, the one place I can face myself with brutal awareness.

3. It is my hope to publish a book of my poetry, so that my story might be heard, and others might find healing in the words, as I have.