About Sarah Kay: Sarah Kay is a professor of French at New York University.
At this point in my life - age 24 - I have chosen a fairly strange path that not many are walking. I am a professional spoken word poet who tours the world performing and teaching. I run an organization called Project VOICE dedicated to using this ar...
Spoken word poetry is the art of performance poetry. I tell people it involves creating poetry that doesn't just want to sit on paper, that something about it demands it be heard out loud or witnessed in person.
My world was the size of a crayon box, and it took every colour to draw her
I think there is a human instinct to tell stories, no matter who you are or where you live.
Most days it feels as if the world is whirling around me and I am standing still. In slow motion, I watch the colors blur; people and faces all become a massive wash.
I want her to know that this world is made out of sugar. It can crumble so easily but don’t be afraid to stick your tongue out and taste it.
It does not matter how strong your gravity is, we were always meant to fly.
I have seen the best of you, and the worst of you, and I choose both.
Be careful, darling. Your footsteps land heavy here. Your racket will wake the dragons.
You can only fit so many words in a postcard, only so many in a phone call, only so many into space before you forget that words are sometimes used for things other than filling emptiness.
But I have seen the best of you and the worst of you, and I choose both
Some people read palms to tell your future, but I read hands to tell your past. Each scar makes a story worth telling. Each callused palm, each cracked knuckle is a missed punch or years in a factory.
Because rain will wash away everything, if you let it.
Life will hit you hard in the face, wait for you to get back up just so it can kick you in the stomach. But getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air.
Because there's nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it's sent away.
Such a little thing really, a kiss... most people don't give it a moment's consideration. They kiss on meeting, they kiss on parting, that simple touching of flesh is taken entirely for granted as a basic human right.
It is December, and nobody asked if I was ready.
This is how I disappear in pieces. This is how I leave while not moving from my seat. This is how I dance away. This is how I'm gone before you wake.
I will love you with too many commas, but never any asterisks.
There is a girl who still writes you; she doesn’t know how not to.
