Yesterday was a bad impulse shopping day for me. Had I known what sort of melancholy mood I was in, I would have stayed far, far away from anything remotely resembling a mini mall.

It's useless to resist you know, said the money in my wallet. You know you're going to spend me, if not here, then in some other store. Come on, get yourself something nice. You've been a good girl lately, go ahead. Come on, no one has to know, go ahead and splurge.

Is that Barnes and Noble? Girl, tell me you're not even thinking about being so close and not going in there. You're a book addict, you need to read, you live to read ... Hell, I hate to tell you this, but if it wasn't for all those books you've read, you'd hardly ever have a life. Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about. You know I've got the right of it.

So what's it going to be today? Another one of those single girl reads where the girl finally gets her man in the end? Or one of those books that requires five boxes of Kleenex and a dozen advil by the time you're through? You know, you're so predictable sometimes, it's a wonder they haven't made a section in there just for you.

Poetry today?

Now THAT'S different. Yeah, I was being sarcastic. I know how you love a good tortured writer. Credence to the soul ... Isn't that what you say? The stuff that puts the power behind the words. You got to have angst, without it you're only a red wheelbarrow, in search of story, that needs an author.

Remember that time you wrote a poem about grilled cheese. You wrote it because the "Creative Writing" teacher couldn't handle reading the intense stuff. It made her uncomfortable. She used to hand those papers back to you so pristine, you wondered if she even bothered to read it long enough before grading you with a B. And how you hated her, when she'd make those comments in the margins, or suggest a change in the words you'd chosen to use. Rewriting the very thing that had come straight from your heart.

And do you remember, all the times she'd make the entire class sit through an hour of poetry readings. Her with her glasses slipping off her nose, in her peacock blue polyester pants, trying to shove her ass up higher onto the desk. Reading away in her nasally tone, poem after poem, of flowers, lollipops and her wonderfully, perfect offspring.

And wasn't it a lucky coincidence, that her daughter happened to be in your class. How she'd beam and smile, when her mother was reading yet another "original" poem to her hostage students. Sitting there, preening away in the front row, while the rest of us tried our best not to vomit on each others shoes. And how many times, did you have to hear about how she had been published ... Though you never saw the proof of any such thing. One thing was certain however, the teacher favored cheesecake poems over those of substance. If you wanted to make the grade, you had to conform to the going standard.

So you wrote about grilled cheese and got an A. And she asked you to stand up and read it in front of the class. But you didn't want to, in fact bluntly refusing to read those nambly pambly words out loud. Your friend Lee sat snickering in the chair beside you, if you could have, you would have kicked him. "That'll teach you." he said after class, "I guess now you'll think twice before you turn the art of sandwich making into a profession."

I remember how disappointed you were, when you realized the class was nothing short of a joke. You, who had wanted her entire life to do nothing more than write something, that could mean something to somebody, somewhere. Instead you're teacher prompted you to write about the kind of soup that would best compliment a grilled cheese sandwich.

So you decided to keep your writing to yourself. Hiding it away like a shameful little secret, cramming it all into notebooks you knew you'd never share. But every writer craves an audience.

Words are the bridge between mankind. They make sentences, they express emotions, they give reason to everything under the sun. Nobody can own them, no word is ever exclusively yours, we all simply borrow them for a time.

So you bought your book of poetry yesterday and took the children to the park, listening to their sounds of glee as they dashed madly about the play yard. You stood there like a bird poised and ready for flight, the wind softly tugging at your raven black hair.

You raised your face to the sky, alive with the warmth of the sun, sat down and began to read outloud, verse after glorious verse. Pausing for breath in the moments when the poem told you to be still and building to a crescendo, when the words dripped like nectar from the page. And although there was still a little bit wrong with the world, just for a moment, it all felt so right.