At age eight years young, I won my first poetry invitational after being forced by my teacher, Miss Mike, to recite Sara Teasdale's "THE FALLING STAR" in front of my peers.

She spanked my open palm with a long, wooden ruler when I declined. In my young mind blacks weren't authors and poets, so I thought it was ludicrous.

Especially with broke bitches all around me reinforcing this as fact. Outside of my grandfather and my cousin Cynthia Collins, I never seen anyone with a book, but brandished drugs, hoes and social injustice.

The good ole crack infested 80s...

Not only had I memorized "The Falling Star," but Miss Mike was so moved by my delivery she secretly entered me into the school's talent show.

I not only received a standing ovation, but I won first place. I remember the tingle of tears in my eyes watching a bunch of strangers applaud me for reciting a caucasian woman's words.

In my light blue pinstriped suit, I wanted to run and hide. I felt awkward. Why, because my star fell two years before that moment.

The day I was violated. Repeatedly. The above picture foretold my destiny in literature. Notice the books behind me. And one other thing, my smile. I hid behind it, but my eyes revealed my inner pain and suffering.

A couple weeks later I was invited to compete against those on a high school level. I wore the same suit. I not only received a standing ovation once again, but I clenched 🥇 1st Place, beating out high school freshmen, sophmores, juniors and seniors.

With the same feeling of nausea. I felt like such a fool standing before everyone with a snaggle-tooth smile. We're they applauding my delivery and performance or were they applauding the fact that those were an American Literature icon's words...

I ran off the stage after I received my prize...

I trashed both the 1st place blue ribbon and the trophy because I was awarded for reciting someone else's poetry and it wasn't my own writing or work.

The very next day I started writing my own poetry in my journals.

And my literary journey had officially begun...

But the path would be wrought with pain, abuse and abandonment.

Not only did I hate myself, I never smiled. This smile was a sarcastic one to appease my Mama for this picture. But I never told anyone that, the morning this picture was taken, I stared at the ceiling all night in the dark contemplating suicide while my mother and siblings slept soundly.

By the 7th grade I was a total introvert, laughing and smiling to hide self-hatred. I used to laugh at myself in the mirror and tear myself down. I felt ugly, unwanted and unloved. I was relentlessly bullied every day, from being beat up on the school bus and at the bus stop by male peers, to being pulled in the boys bathroom and abused by three eighth graders from the Circle Plaza Projects and Rainbow City in a stall while a fourth dude was the look out person.

Once they took turns making me give them oral sex, they jumped on me and took my booty when I begged for my Mama.

They took turns exploding inside of me, calling me every punk, sissy and faggor in the human language, with my face pressed on the pissy toilet seat.

Eventually the look out person wanted a piece of the action by shoving his penis in my throat till I regurgitated.

They left me on the toilet broken, shaken and void. I remember I faked a smile, washed myself in the sink and went back to class like nothing happened.

I was only twelve years old.

My freshman year at Miami Southridge Senior High was a traumatizing event for me...

The same bullies that violated me in a Southwood bathroom followed me to high school and bullied me even more by spreading rumors that I was gay and was caught servicing dudes in the bathroom in middle school.

I did no such thing. One didn't have college prep English in the eight grade by slacking off.

Even the bullies' girlfriends taunted me.

I kept quiet and focused on my scholastics, but what they failed to tell everyone was that they were the ones being serviced, they were the ones that assaulted me.

I'd just survived Hurricane Andrew, the worst natural disaster Miami, Florida had ever seen. I was whisked out of Southridge and moved with mom and my siblings an hour away to Ft. Lauderdale, The Inverrary Hotel...

The hotel Jackie Gleason died in. I attended Boyd Anderson. The above picture was put on display for the entire school after the photographer said that I was the most photogenic student out of them all.

Little did he know that I thought I was the ugliest subject of them all.