This is the line that made me fall in love with writing. ‘If You Come Softly’ by Audre Lord has a special place in my heart because it lets me understand my mind. 

This poem fell into my realm of reality in high school through a book of the same namesake. My thoughts on the book are murky, but it lives in my memory as a middleman, bringing me to a think piece that continuously takes new forms.

My first read-through was with the mindset of a confused teen who romanticizes everything. With the help of this poem, I painted a grim love tragedy, which I deemed better than Romeo and Juliet, for I saw lovers going through trials in hopes of redemption while enduring pain. 

But one day, without warning, there were no more lovers, just myself. I felt that shift; each ‘you’ felt like I was calling for myself while telling the tragic love story we were facing. I no longer had my escaped story; I now saw past trials and longed for my redemption. 

The poem’s weight on me made it a burden to read, but removing it from my reality felt like a betrayal to the lovers I once saw. I concluded by reading the poem stanzas as individual pieces, creating dissimilar stories I could handle. This strategy built up my strength to face myself-love tale, but with the side effect of cased members of my real life in the chronicles.

The stories I created with this stanza alone weren’t enough for me to realize my love for writing. It wasn’t until I noticed a pattern of using the line ‘Only those who stay dead shall remember death’ to help process complex feelings that I fell in love with the power of words and became power-hungry.

To the person reading this, striving for power is not malice by nature; I promise you that I want to create joy. Having a piece of art in which you can draw understanding is a gift I wish to give someone someday the way Audre Lord gave to me.