I am dyslexic.
I am a poet.
I am also a writer.
Those three things are not in conflict.
They work together.
If a word, a sentence, or a conversation hits my mind or my body, I feel it deeply.
That is where a poem begins.
If I have not experienced something, I cannot write about it.
It would feel hollow.
It would not be mine.
When I think of silence, it can feel heavy.
When I think of certain memories, I feel them in my chest.
When I think of my brother or my dad, the memory evokes love.
It rises before I can control it.
It does not start with grammar.
It does not start with structure.
It starts with impact.
I write it down immediately.
Notebook.
Phone.
Whatever is near.
Then I sit with the word.
Sometimes for days.
Sometimes I write in the moment.
I let it settle.
I let it reveal itself.
I ask what it meant.
Where I first learned it.
What it did to me.
I think in memory.
I think in sensation.
I ask what that word felt like in my body.
Was it heavy?
Sharp?
Suffocating?
Quiet?
Or was it warm?
Tender?
Comforting?
Love rising without warning?
Then I go deeper.
What did it do to my mind?
Did it make me withdraw?
Did it make me feel not good enough?
Not intelligent enough?
Wrong somehow?
Only after that do I shape the poem.
I think about structure.
I think about space.
I think about the title.
By the time the poem is formed, something in me has shifted.
What was loud becomes quieter.
What was tangled becomes ordered.
What felt stuck has somewhere to live.
Writing does not erase what I have lived.
But it allows me to carry it differently.
Sometimes it is draining.
But most of the time, I feel lighter.
Clearer.
Freer.
Spelling and grammar do not always come easily to me.
Sometimes I stare at a word I have written for years and it still looks wrong.
I use tools to help with spelling and grammar.
The depth is mine.
The structure is mine.
The work is mine.
You might notice I spell DislexicPoet without the “y”
For years I was corrected.
For years I was told what I was doing wrong.
So I chose to keep it the way my mind first shaped it.
Not as a mistake.
As ownership.
It is how I saw it.
It is how my brain processed it.
It is part of me.
I am not here to perform perfection.
I am here to write honestly.
Dyslexia means I process words differently.
I feel them first.
I connect them to memory and image before mechanics.
That is not broken.
That is a different route.
Many creative people are dyslexic.
Whoopi Goldberg
Keira Knightley
Richard Branson
Different wiring does not limit potential.
It shapes it.
If you are dyslexic and you write, you are not wrong.
You are not less.
You are not broken.
You simply process language differently.
Use that.
Build with it.
Do not shrink your mind to fit someone else’s idea of neat.
Thank you for reading. 🖤
#DislexicPoet