Hi Friends, Today I’ll be sharing a new video of me reading my poem, “First Love”, published in my book, “Lord of the Butterflies.” It’s a piece about the first time I fell in love with a woman, and begins with a line that made me laugh out loud to write: “I don’t think I ever really kissed any boys. I think my tongue had just been punching their tongues.” (On the very off-chance that any of my ex-boyfriend’s are reading this I’ll say the line is a tiny bit of an exaggeration, as one or two of you were make-out superstars, but most of my boy-kissing was a tongue boxing match that no one won).

I wrote “First Love” after finishing a series of poems that were quite devastating to write, most specifically a poem about the massacre at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, and another about the seemingly endless string of school shootings in the U.S. I had one intention while writing “First Love”, which was to put to page the story of something in our world changing for the better. When we witness so many things not changing for the better, it becomes incredibly easy to lose faith that large cultural shifts are possible. Stories that remind us that there has, in fact, been a lot of positive change, can refuel us and give us faith that working for change will be fruitful.