on paper

By Jacqueline Woodson
The first time I write my full name

Jacqueline Amanda Woodson

without anybody's help
on a clean white page in my composition notebook,
     I know

if I wanted to

I could write anything.

Letters becoming words, words gathering meaning,
     becoming
thoughts outside my head

becoming sentences

written by

                                                  Jacqueline Amanda Woodson

Copyright Credit: Jacqueline Woodson, "on paper" from Brown Girl Dreaming. Copyright © 2014 by Jacqueline Woodson. Used by permission of Nancy Paulsen Books, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
Source: Brown Girl Dreaming (Nancy Paulsen Books, 2014)