My own words

Earlier this week an old elementary school journal appeared in my room. It was one of those flimsy paper things we did every month, a hastily colored print-out with too much large-lined paper stapled to it at the corner. The first few pages were half full almost illegible insect poems. Apparently I didn't know how to use spaces between words (either that, or I should be given partial credit for inventing the #hashtag) because sometimes I wasn't sure whether it said that moths ate "sweaters, cloth, and rugs" or "sweaters, cloth, an drugs." I finished flipping through it after only a couple of minutes, sure that every word (sandwiched together though they were) had been copied from a whiteboard. They were prescribed poems, and I'm sure that every single "journal" that month looked the same, as we wrote the words they gave us. 

But I write my own words now.