I Wish I’d Written This

SCARS

My face
is a book

of invisible
scars. Each

scar tells
a story.

Each story
begins,

Back when I
was small.

Alex G.
Southwestern High School
InsideOut Student
Detroit Public Schools

This bit of tenderness from a six-foot tall, puffy-faced high school student who didn’t like to talk.

I wish I’d written this, yes, for sure.

But I’m glad that, as a kid, I didn’t see myself in this particularly skewed way—or maybe I did but I simply didn’t know how to put words to what I was seeing—a way that made Alex, when he looked into his mirror, see a face that was “a book of invisible scars.”

Only the poet in us knows what I like to call “the real me, the one nobody sees.” I borrow this line from Sandra Cisnersos’ The House on Mango Street and use it to get students to look closely, to dig deeper, to feel and then speak and make art from that feeling.

Sometimes that “real me” is larger than life, a spiritual giant of sorts.

Take a look at this poem by Quin’dara, one of those rare students who was born to be a poet.

THE REAL ME

The real me
that nobody sees
is walking
on mid air.

When the wind
blows hard
I do not fall.

There is always a piece
of mid-air wind
that I alone
am walking on.

No one understands
that I am the one
bringing the wind
its destination.

The wind stands over
and watches over
everyone. I am like
another God

that nobody sees
walking across the sky.

Quin’dara G.
Southwestern High School
InsideOut Student
Detroit Public Schools

Once again, I wish I’d written this.