Dear Poetry,

On Monday I went to Pizzaria Delphina with a few people from church. It was delicious - particularly impressed with the crust. After we finished the appetizer, I looked down and saw that the olives were smiling up at me. I took it with Charity's camera. She is the best. Seriously.

I hated you - unapologetically and fiercely - for three semesters. I hated you passively all through high school and my first two years of college, but it got ugly when Master Raj Chetty wanted me to explicate T.S. Elliot and Sylvia Plath. He made me love my classmates, the English language, all of the written word except for you, Poetry. Then Dr. Wilcox assigned "the Alter" for British Literary History, and I thought you might not be all bad. By the end of Dr. Walker’s semester in Romantic and Victorian literature, I knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my life nestling in your arms. On the bus to school this week I read a couple dozen poems, but I wanted to especially thank you for “Say Uncle,” “Poet in Harlem," and (for the second time) “Stages.”

britt